201 days
by 01cheers
Summary: Fluffy multiple-PoV vignettes strung along a loose storyline aiming for a universal happy ending. Deviates from TDK after the fundraiser party; the second half mostly features (a younger, up-and-coming version of) Selina Kyle.
1. Chapter 1

.

_To anyone who has read Chinese Boxes etc, forget all that story, wind back the canon clock eight years, lower your expectations a few notches, and forgive me. This is the opposite of my "serious" stuff, as I subvert Nolan's dramatic narrative and patch together favourite characters, scenes, and clichés in a two-parter salute to this wonderful fandom before slipping happily into the ranks of the readers. The __idea comes from a remark in _Plus ça Change,_ my last TDKR fic. Not sure if a warning is needed for the major slash subplot in the first part, but consider yourselves warned. It is all pretty tame anyway._

_I originally meant the characters__' ages to be the actors' ages in 2008, at the time TDK was released; thus_ _Bruce would be 34, Rachel 30, Harvey 40, and Selina 25. Then nogood4me wisely pointed out that Bruce was 30 at the time of Batman Begins, which would make him 31 at the "canon" time of TDK, and that Selina' s database file in TDKR has her date of birth as September 21, 1985, meaning that she would be 23 at the time TDK came out. I have my doubts at Selina's status as a master thief at such a tender age; but will settle for Bruce's praise being blatant lust-fuelled flattery._

**.**

**201 days**

.

_June 10, 9 PM_

"I love you."

She ends the call and delves back into the controlled pandemonium of the MCU HQ, unable to bring herself to say the words back. She knows Harvey means it, she has heard him say it and has said it herself to him times and times already… but the last time she heard these words they were said by another man, and she feels guilty by association. _We can trust Bruce Wayne_, she said; good thing Harvey did not see her cheeks burning. _She_ can trust Bruce, but had Harvey known the truth, _he_ never would. Harvey might have been wondering why she has been keeping her distance these past three days, since Bruce's fundraiser party; earlier in the day, they sat through most of the sombre memorial for Commissioner Loeb side by side but did not even touch hands; it was only when the scene exploded into chaos with the first gunshots that Harvey grabbed her, bodily, and led her to the armoured SUV. Caring, honest, dependable Harvey, the man she is considering spending her future with…

None of which stopped her when, after he had charged off to question Lau, practically ordering her not to follow after her close brush with death at the fundraiser, she stayed the night at Bruce's penthouse.

It was gratitude, and the aftermath of the adrenaline rush, that released the pent-up affection she had always felt for him but had been reluctant to show, not wanting to give him false hopes, knowing that his dreams of a life together were as fantastic as the tales of Batman's exploits; more so. It was sweet, and more than a little awkward, being with him; she had not expected herself to be so self-conscious. She certainly had not expected _Bruce_ to be so self-conscious. For all his undeniable skill, for all his publicised conquests, he seemed too overawed by her, and she was too detached, still shaken and feeling guilty already, for their tryst to have held real passion. It felt as if he treated her like a holy relic, and she is not really into relics and pedestals and worship; she is too irreverent herself to be revered, and will take the silly antics she and Harvey get up to over all that, anytime. Worst of all, she _knows_ Bruce can be different; just not with her. Then again, it makes her choice easier.

xxx

"Harvey called. He says Batman's going to turn himself in."

Standing in the stark glass-walled emptiness of the penthouse, she keeps her distance from Bruce, arms wrapped defensively around her chest. She does not want him to come close, let alone try any advances; he has sensed it and stays away, but the pain and longing seep through the sideways looks he is giving her. Is it really _her_ that he longs for, or is it the symbol he has made her into? _Don't make me your one hope for a normal life,_ she entreats him; he won't listen, just presses on with begging her for some sign of commitment. She tells him she meant her words a year ago, when she told him they could be together once he had hung up the cape; but even then she knew it to be a theoretical scenario, not a real prospect; now she only says _yes_ because denying it would be a greater lie. He gets it all wrong, again; and when their lips touch, for a second she thinks that maybe there is chemistry between them, after all; but the kiss is the same as what they shared three nights ago, too careful, too reverent, almost chaste; and when she calls after him and says that _they are not going to let the two of them be together_, it is a lie; she does not _want_ them to be together. She is almost glad she blundered into spending a night with him; this way, when she and Harvey are married, there will be no regrets.

When she watches Harvey's press conference the following day, reckless, noble, big-hearted Harvey, the regrets are there full force as she hates herself for having been unfaithful to him, even momentarily. Even with Bruce.

.

_June 12, 9 AM_

His raw flesh is burning under the bandages, he cannot close his left eye, and there is an unbearable itch in what used to be the inside of his cheek where the mucous membrane has dried from exposure. At this rate he should probably really be in an airtight chamber and not in a regular ward.

But none of this matters.

It is the voices that are really driving him crazy.

_Listen, we don't have a lot of time..._ Rachel's urgent whisper echoes in his mind. _Harvey, just in case, I want to tell you something, OK?.. I don't want to live without you, and I do have an answer for you, and my answer is yes._

Then, when he was about to tell her again that everything was going to be all right, not really believing it but desperately hoping, another voice, that hoarse mumble that had been driving him up a wall in the sick videos, cut over on the speaker.

It sounded like it was coming from the GCPD interrogation room; the interrogator's gravelly inflections left no doubt to his identity, either. Just as Harvey was wondering how in hell the sick freak had managed to get that audio and splice it into his phone line, all the desire to fight, all the will to live was sucked out of him.

_You know, for a while there I thought you really were Dent, the way you threw yourself after her… Does Harvey know about you and his little bunny?_

And by the guttural roar and the crash of breaking furniture that followed, he knew that he had just heard the truth.

He still wanted her to be the one who was saved. More so, if anything.

Now he does not even know if Rachel is alive. The black beast hauled him out of the warehouse as Rachel's voice came back on the line, and he was still protesting when the air around him filled with fire and then his face was ripped to shreds by the burning oil.

All he knows is that one way or another, he has lost her.

That he never had her.

xxx

"...We wish him a speedy recovery because God knows we need him now!"

They should not have brought in the TV; they must have meant to distract him from the pain but the presenter's emphatic declaration feels like a mockery. Who is _we_? The nameless people of Gotham? The Mafia, who must be itching to peel the skin off the rest of his body? Surely not the woman who has meant the world to him. There is no mention of her on the news. Maybe she made it. Or maybe she is dead; with all hell breaking loose, it is getting hard to keep track of the body count. The cold horror that engulfs him at the thought is pierced by a sneaky, devilish whisper in his brain. _But she never wanted you anyway_.

There is sudden commotion in the halls outside, the din of alarms, the clang of gurneys, urgent voices. Someone opens the door to his ward, and before he can ask what is going on, that nightmare mask is inches away from his face, at once mocking and commiserating, ruthless and perversely compassionate.

He tries to lunge for the Joker's throat but it is no use, the Joker is stronger, and healthier, and crazier.

"You know, I don't want there to be any hard feelings between us, Harvey." The same croaky mumble, the busy workings of a twisted mind laid bare. "You and your girlfriend was nothing personal." He mumbles on, about wanting to embarrass the Batman, about his hatred of plans and his desire to "turn their little plan on itself"; all Harvey can hear is the blood coursing through his veins, the roaring hatred that makes his fingers itch for a murder weapon.

And, as if by miracle, here it is, the Joker's hand pressing the warm, heavy steel into his palm.

"Introduce a little anarchy."

It feels… So. Fucking. Good… to be spinning the barrel in this _pas-de-deux_ of Russian roulette, even if the freak is watching him, gleefully unafraid, with eager eyes. He is not sure if he is disappointed or thrilled when pulling the trigger only leads to the hollow click of an empty chamber. The Joker is still alive, but this means it is his turn next; maybe he will get lucky and end this travesty.

The barrel has not even stopped spinning when the gun is yanked out of his hand as the black shadow fills the room.

xxx

He slips into a semi-wakeful daze minutes after the IV drip is stuck into his arm, the painkiller he has been refusing now numbing him into a lull. His initial attempts at resistance, as he was being rolled on the gurney into the waiting helicopter, crumbled before the other man's strength, and the threat of having his wrists strapped to the gurney if he persevered added insult to injury, making him give up.

But he knows that Rachel is alive, his hoarse question, the first thing he said to his shadowy custodian, immediately answered in the affirmative. The man may be a two-faced cheat on an order of magnitude far above Harvey's, but he would not lie about _that_.

"Where are we going?" he asks when the high-pitched whine of the rotors powering up turns to a stable low hum.

"Airport," is the toneless reply. "You're not safe in Gotham."

"Where are you taking me?"

"I can't tell you yet. It's for your own safety. You will know when you're there."

"What about... this?" He raises his free arm to indicate the bandages and the IV.

"There are doctors waiting to board the plane with you. They've brought all the equipment needed to continue your treatment."

All that is left for him to do, it seems, is to accept his fate as a patient, willing or not. So much for –

"You let him escape," he lashes out at the black hulk. "You let the Joker go."

"I had to choose," is the growled response. "You or him. If I chased after him you would have killed yourself."

Harvey remembers seeing, in his peripheral vision, the freak darting out of the ward as the Batman was busy disarming him.

"You made the wrong choice."

"I don't think so."

"Why do you want me alive? You have _her_, what do you want with _me_?"

Silence.

"I heard what the Joker said. Don't try to lie to me."

"I won't. It happened once. It's never happening again."

"I said, don't lie to me!" Harvey barks, the bandage pulling painfully at exposed flesh. If anything, it is Rachel he does not trust to uphold the truth of those words. If she was cheating on him already, why stop now, why choose a disfigured freak, half-insane from pain and concussion and betrayal, over Gotham's superhero symbol?

"I'm not lying," the man growls back. "It is you she loves, and it is you she wants to marry."

"And how the hell do you know _that_?" Harvey asks; what would normally be a sarcastic grin must now look like a horrible grimace. In truth, he has no right to expect any of that from her now.

The black shadow is still for a second. They have landed by now, the engine noise dying down outside underscoring the heavy silence.

And then Harvey hears a click and a sort of rustle and before he knows what is happening, the hulking figure spins to face him and he finds himself staring – gaping – at Bruce Wayne's face under a mop of dishevelled dark hair superimposed on that superhuman body.

"Because she told me," Bruce says quietly, drops a folded sheet of paper on top of the gurney next to Harvey's hand, and gets out.

.

_June 12, 2 PM_

"I can't tell you where he is right now – "

If she had any less self-control she would have slapped him.

"Where. Is. Harvey. Dent?" she repeats instead, stepping to within inches of him; he is so surprised that he almost stumbles back.

"Rachel..."

"Where. The hell. Is Harvey?" she snaps.

"He's safe." Bruce keeps his voice low. "Rachel, this is too public..."

She finally calms down enough to take stock of their surroundings. Sure enough, the hallway outside the DA's office is not the best venue when it comes to privacy. But then, Bruce himself tracked her down here.

"OK, let's go." She turns to leave.

"Where?" he asks even as he follows.

"Your place. Anyplace we can talk." She spins on him mid-stride. "If you still won't take me to him."

She had to spend the night in hospital, treated for concussion and minor burns on her legs, after Gordon dragged her out of the exploding warehouse at 250 52nd street in the nick of time. And ever since she was released in the morning she had been desperately and futilely trying to find out where Harvey was and what state he was in, and trying to reach Bruce, who she was certain should know the answers, likewise in vain. Until she gave up and went to the office for a bit of crisis management, and Bruce found her there.

They ride in the Aventador in gloomy silence. The moment they are inside the penthouse, she turns on him again, forcing him to put up his hands in a sign of surrender.

"I had to get him out of here. He's OK," Bruce hurriedly adds. "He has some... bad burns on his face and concussion damage from the shockwave, but his life is in no danger. I'm sorry, Rachel, I got to him as fast as I could but he had oil on one side of his face and it caught fire…"

She feels tears welling up in her eyes.

"Where is he?" she entreats, quietly now. She just desperately wants to see him, burns be damned… and was forgetting in the heat of the moment that Bruce was risking his life, too.

"I had him taken to Mayreau." Seeing her puzzled expression, he explains, with a touch of embarrassment, as they walk to the sitting area, a ridiculously long distance in the vast open space; he makes a point of sitting a couple of feet away from her. "It's an island I – own – in the Lesser Antilles, in the Caribbean. It's the safest place I could think of right now, short of the Bat-cave, no one would know to look for him there. I checked the backgrounds of the doctors I asked to go with him, and Alfred flew with them and just called to say they've landed. He should be safe. He couldn't stay here, Rachel," he adds, though by now she is no longer arguing. "When I got to him at Gotham General, the Joker was there already..."

She shudders at the mention.

"I had to get him out of here," he repeats.

She feels her shoulders slump. "I know." He is right, it is for the best. "Can you take me to him?" She will have to come back at once to deal with the mess here, but she wants to see Harvey alive first.

"Rachel," Bruce starts, and to her ears, he sounds scared. "Maybe you should wait a few days until he's more – like himself – "

"Why? I don't care about the burns."

"He – he knows about – _us_… "

She wants to argue that there is no _us_ between them, certainly not since she gave Bruce her letter, but he puts up a hand to stop her.

"I know," he says, quietly, not looking at her. "That's not what I meant. When I was interrogating him at GCPD, the Joker said to me that he had figured us out, and he transmitted that audio to Harvey's speakerphone at the – "

He cuts off mid-sentence, seeing how she has buried her face in her hands. Just like the Joker to taunt a man on the brink of death with the betrayal of the woman he loved and the man he trusted. And neither of them can say it isn't true.

"I'm sorry." He has moved to sit right beside her but is purposely not touching her.

She shakes her head. "It was my fault."

"No, it wasn't; it was mine. And I told him you love him and not me. I gave him your letter…"

She looks up at him, at the pain welling up in those dark eyes in an outwardly calm face, and feels instantly ashamed. Here she is, finding relief in another's suffering, rejoicing in the knowledge that the man who has loved her all his life has broken his own heart to let her go.

And this time, the kiss is all her doing, and now, when they least need it, that passionate spark is dancing on their lips and on their roaming hands, at the wrong-est of wrong times, until he mutters an unnecessary apology and walks out on her.

.

_June 20, 9 PM_

"In breaking news, the psychopathic villain known as the Joker who has been terrorising Gotham for the past year and whose terror campaign reached unprecedented heights last week with the high-profile murders of Judge Surrillo and Commissioner Loeb, and attempts on the lives of the Mayor, District Attorney Harvey Dent, who is still undergoing treatment for severe burns at an undisclosed location, and Assistant District Attorney Rachel Dawes…"

Get to the point already, Rachel thinks sourly. By now only invaders from Mars would not know all this by heart and backwards. Maybe even_ they_ would.

"…has made a daring attempt at escape when being transported to Arkham Asylum following the conclusive psychiatric evaluation…"

She sits bolt upright. The newscaster _did_ say _attempt_, didn't she?

"…before he was apprehended by Gotham's famous crimefighter known as the Batman…"

So now he is _famous crimefighter_, is he? Ten days ago you would have been calling him _notorious vigilante_.

"…and returned into custody. At present the Joker is in a specially reinforced ward at Arkham under armed guard and heavy surveillance; however, news has reached us of another Arkham inmate, former doctor Jonathan Crane, having escaped in the commotion, now the subject of an extensive search. In other news…"

She tunes out of the broadcast and reaches for her phone. Of course they never mentioned, and had no way of knowing, if Bruce himself is OK, as in, if the Batman made it past the encounter safe and sound, relatively speaking. Good thing she has a line on inside info, as it were.

When she has hit the answerphone message three times straight in the space of half an hour, Rachel gets in her car and goes to the penthouse.

xxx

"Master Bruce isn't here, my dear girl. But do come on in, let's see if maybe I can help you."

Alfred sounds sympathetic, and apparently takes it all in stride; it is as if she was not here just over a week ago saying goodbyes to him.

"Is he OK?"

She is not sure if Alfred's eyebrow rises a fraction of an inch at this avid concern for the fate of a never-quite-boyfriend she ceremoniously dumped, but he makes no other outward sign of surprise. They are, after all, childhood friends.

"For the most part." Seeing her worried face, he continues, "A few cuts and bruises, just as usual, and he twisted an ankle, but no broken bones this time. He's on his way to Mayreau," Alfred adds after a beat. "Maybe it will do them both good to spend a few days in good company."

Or maybe they will punch each other's lights out. "Are you sure, Alfred?"

"Oh don't worry. Last time I saw your fiancé three days ago, he was doing much better. And he thanked me when I was leaving. I don't think he'll be in the mood to pick fights with Master Wayne."

"How is he?" For an instant, Rachel is embarrassed about being more concerned for Bruce than Harvey. But then, it fell to Bruce to fight the Joker earlier in the day.

"Much, much better, as I say, my dear. He had to get a skin graft on his face because of the burns, and still had the bandages on when I was leaving. But the doctors say he can take them off after two weeks. That's a week from now. And he has been following all the news and can't wait to get back here to deal with the RICO case."

"Did he say anything about me?" she asks sheepishly.

Alfred hesitates. "No. But I saw him watching the news once when you were interviewed on-air. You should have seen him watching you. It'll be all right, my dear." He squeezes her shoulder. "Just give him a bit more time."

She shakes her head. "I've created such a mess with them both, Alfred."

"No, you haven't. _They_ have." She is surprised at Alfred's forceful objection, but then he goes on in a much softer tone. "And they both love you very much".

They hug again when she leaves, a much more hopeful parting hug than the one ten days ago. And this time Alfred gives her a spare key and the access code to the penthouse, just in case she needs a safe place to go to in a hurry. She does not know which is greater, her gratitude for the continued trust or the sadness coming from Alfred's certainty that Master Bruce will not be entertaining other personal visitors who might be surprised at her showing up.

.

_June 20, 11 PM _

_Dear Bruce, I need to be honest and clear. I am going to marry Harvey Dent. I love him and I want to spend the rest of my life with him._

He knows the letter by heart; there is not much point in re-reading it for the thousandth time, except maybe to see Rachel's handwriting… and to reassure himself that it is, after all, real.

Or _was_ real, at least; he is still unsure, at best, about what Rachel will make of his face when she sees him. He does not know what _he_ will make of his own face when he sees it; it is six more days before the bandages come off. Harvey may have no qualms facing down a Mafioso with a loaded gun, but he is terrified at the thought of what he will see; a glimpse of the grisly death's-head he caught reflected in a chrome tray just before the skin graft operation would have given him nightmares if it had not been for the nightly sedatives. Wayne may have got the best surgeons to operate on him, but Harvey is not sure if that sort of horror can be easily put right.

He listens to the tide crashing on the distant reef, hoping that the sound will lull him to sleep, now that they are weaning him off painkillers and tranquilisers. The island itself is a sort of mega-tranquiliser, he reckons with a wry smile. Small and beautiful, a mere two miles long and less than a mile across, with surprisingly steep jagged hills in the middle and picture-postcard pristine white deserted beaches all around. He has only been on one himself, the perfect palm-fringed crescent of Saltwhistle Bay a few hundred yards downhill from the villa, meeting with the inverted crescent of another beach across a narrow strip of land, widening at the northern end to form a hillock at the tip of a peninsula; but he has seen the photos on the walls. For someone like Wayne, the villa is a surprisingly simple affair, a rambling colonial-style whitewashed house, sensibly built in concrete to withstand hurricanes but with a large wooden veranda overlooking the beach and providing stunning sunset panoramas. He wonders if its owner has ever been here for longer than a day at a time, and what he got up to on those days.

Then again, it is none of Harvey's business.

xxx

He is not sure if it is a dream. Lying half-awake in the tropical darkness, before the first hints of the grey pre-dawn light start creeping up through the window, he feels the feather-light touch, fingers stroking his healthy cheek, followed by an equally light kiss on his temple. It must be a dream; for the only person who would do that, watch over him sleeping and kiss him like that, is Rachel; and she is still in Gotham.

It must be a dream… except that when he hears, later in the morning, that Mr Wayne flew in from Gotham late last night, he no longer knows what to think.

.

_June 26, 6 PM_

"Come _on_, you can't just chicken out of this."

Bruce may be very sympathetic to his injury, but he is obviously not above taunting when it comes to coaxing Harvey to take the last of the bandages off. Well, if there are no holds barred…

"Says the man who wears a mask half the time."

"That's not fighting fair."

Aha, so _now_ we get all touchy about injustice.

"I didn't realise we were fighting fair."

"I didn't realise we were _fighting_." And then he kind of shrinks, his shoulders slumping; he looks to be a second away from an abject apology, which is by now redundant, considering Rachel's choice and considering what Bruce himself has done for him since. And yet in the five days that passed since Bruce got to the island he has stayed away most of the time, and when they did meet – the terrace is a real magnet at sunset time – they only exchanged a few sentences, mostly discussing the news from Gotham, where the situation is now back if not to normal, then at least to less insane. It is only today when the two-week term prescribed by the surgeon is up that Bruce has turned from an absentee host to a major pest.

"Listen, they're all waiting for you back in Gotham, you can't stay away forever."

"_They?_"

Harvey should not have asked out loud, but there is no way he can get over the insecurity. And he does not want Rachel to pick him out of pity, now that he probably looks like a freak on par with the Joker.

"That includes _her_," Bruce insists. "You should have seen her demanding to know where you were. She practically kicked my ass."

Harvey only has one eyebrow to raise, but raise it he does.

"Well, figuratively," Bruce concedes.

"Pity."

"If that's what you want, now's your chance." Bruce takes a couple of steps to the armchair Harvey is sitting in, but Harvey makes no move to get up.

"I think you've been beaten up enough for now." Bruce is still limping, even though he insists on not using a cane; when Harvey asked him what had happened with the Joker, Bruce insisted that it all went well and that he only got a couple of bruises to show for it, but the way he has been hobbling around, and the way he still avoids using his right arm, and twists his entire torso rather than turning his neck, makes him into a poor liar on this occasion. "And you've got the facial scars to show for it," Harvey teases. It may be just one scar, a thin red line in the middle of his chin, but for now it is plainly visible.

Bruce shrugs it off, of course. "In two weeks, no one will be able to see it."

"Unless they are really up close."

"I have no plans of getting up close with criminals."

Yeah, just with District Attorneys who seem to be asleep.

"Never say never," Harvey taunts him.

This elicits a smirk before Bruce comes back to his masochistic cravings. "Anyway, if you still want to beat me up later, I'm at your service."

"I'll remember that."

"Now stop dithering."

He won't let go; Harvey makes what he can of a sour face. "OK."

Two minutes later, Bruce is back at his side with the lid of an antique dressing table, a mirror embedded in the inside, carried under his left arm; but Harvey waves it away.

"You do it. You take off the bandage and tell me how bad it is first."

He looks so earnest, and worried – and _cute_, damn it – as he gently peels away the gauze. And if that was a weird moment, it is nothing compared to the ridiculously affectionate way he is gazing at Harvey's face now.

"Well?"

Now that the spell is broken, as it were, a mischievous smile creeps up on his lips. "It looks… _pink_."

"Pink."

"Yeah. But the doctor said it will fade in a month or so. And it needs an eyebrow, but that can be easily done in a few days. And a hair transplant. But for now…" Bruce unceremoniously ruffles up the hair on the right side of Harvey's head, and he feels it tickle as it falls over to the exposed left side, "you can just flip it over like this."

"Great. I'll look like a punk with a combover."

"Would you rather shave it all off?"

"Shut up and give me the damn mirror." The muscles on the left side of his face are still numb, but not having the gauze stuck on top makes it easier to talk, a small mercy but a mercy nonetheless. Harvey takes a breath and looks up at the image.

It is strange, though, he has to admit, not horrifying. The left side of his face does, in fact, look bright pink; but he does not look like a monster… just a guy with a funny case of sunburn and a missing eyebrow. All in all, Bruce was spot-on. It does, however, bring up an unpleasant memory.

"You know, they had a name for me at Internal Affairs. Two-Face. Harvey Two-Face, for the way I rooted out rotten cops. I guess I've lived up to it now."

Bruce refuses to see the dark irony, or pretends not to. "Better be Two-Face than Half-Face." He takes the mirror away and fixes Harvey with a long, serious stare. "Will you call her now?"

It still gives him a moment's hesitation; but at this point it would really be a case of silly vanity.

"I will."

"Good." Bruce is all businesslike, all of a sudden. "I'll go tell the pilot that we're going to Gotham tomorrow morning."

"What time?"

Bruce shakes his head. "_You_'re staying, I'll bring her here."

He picks up the mirror and hobbles away into the villa.

xxx

The sunset has finished its golden spectacle, the last shades of red and purple have faded into a pale yellow strip under a progression of shades of blue, and Harvey is still sitting on the terrace, alone. Usually at this hour they would watch the evening news and have their bit of chatter, and he misses it today. Instead his thoughts start wandering, tuning out the broadcast still coming through the living room French windows, as he sits there thinking about the man who brought him to this island and is now bringing his fiancée to him. The woman Bruce himself had one day dreamed of marrying. Having known and loved Rachel for a year, he can barely imagine what it must be like, having known and loved her since childhood, letting go of her in favour of a parvenu rival… but he can imagine the pain. He can imagine the resentment that such a rival must surely cause, which does nothing to explain Bruce kissing his temple the night before, to say nothing of the tender look when he was peeling off the gauze. Had anyone asked Harvey what he thought of Bruce Wayne fifteen days ago, he would not have hesitated in delivering a scathing, disparaging assessment of the man whom he thought to be little more than a billionaire airhead. Now he is in danger of going to the other extreme, seeing the extent of his error.

The broadcast ends, and Harvey walks over to the bar next to the kitchen to grab a can of tonic water. He could kill for a beer, but the doctors were very strict in their insistence that he cannot have a drop of alcohol for a month after the transplant.

Well, it looks like _someone_ has been drinking for two… or three or four. He takes in the scene, the tiny heap of ice still melting in the sink, the broken tumbler, and the discarded empty carcass of the whisky bottle on the counter. And two bottle caps, making him wonder how much Bruce has drunk since finishing this one… and where.

Twenty minutes later, Harvey is getting worried for real. He has been all around the villa, including all the bathrooms and spare bedrooms, and the immediate grounds, to no avail; surely Bruce is not so crazy as to have driven away, but then, for a man who never drinks at all, the effects of serious alcohol poisoning may be unpredictable. A check with the security guard, surprisingly laid-back, brings up the notion that _I think Mr Wayne went down to the beach_, and since the guard is not worried enough to do a search, Harvey himself grabs a flashlight and walks the two hundred yards down to Saltwhistle Bay.

It is surprisingly easy to track Bruce from the bottom of the concrete steps; all he has to do is, literally, follow his footsteps in the sand, and it is reassuring to see that they stay well clear of the surf, leading instead to the dark fronds of the palm trees lining the beach.

Sure enough, there he is, sitting slumped against the palm trunk in a stained T-shirt, glassy-eyed, the half-empty bottle still in his hand.

"What the fuck are you doing?" It is painfully obvious, but Harvey cannot think of a better thing to say.

"Sitting," is the slurred evasive reply.

"Give me that." Harvey reaches for the bottle.

"Ah haven't… finisshed it."

Bruce holds up the whisky, trying to get another swig, but mercifully spills it before he can take it up to his mouth. Harvey kicks the bottle away, out of his reach.

"Come on. Can you get up?"

"Don't know."

"Well, you get up yourself or I'll drag you up. Or if you prefer, I'll call the guards to carry you."

This does the trick; Bruce scrambles to his feet, propping himself up against the tree to try and stop his head spinning, then takes Harvey's invitation to lean against him as they stagger back toward the villa.

xxx

An hour, an ice-cold shower, three Alka-Seltzers, and a strong coffee later, Bruce is close to being human again. They sit in the living room; even with the lights dimmed, he is wearing sunglasses, and Harvey tries his best not to smirk. It is his turn to coax now.

"Come on, if you're serious about flying to Gotham tomorrow, it's time to go to bed."

"Of course I'm serious," Bruce mutters, already half-asleep on the couch, his head tilted back on the cushions. "Now I've lost you both through my stupidity… I can at least bring the two of you back together."

Lost them _both_?

"See, when I found out about you two, of course I wanted to steal her from you."

OK, maybe Harvey is imagining things.

"Then when I got to know you, I wanted to steal _you_ from _her_."

Maybe not.

"And now I've lost you both."

"_Now_ you need to go to bed." It is a safer line of reasoning than wherever Bruce's revelations may take them.

Harvey hauls him to his feet and practically leads him by the hand to the master bedroom, taking care to walk slowly on account of Bruce limping; and gets a fresh reminder of his injuries when he pulls off his whisky-soaked T-shirt to reveal the blue-and-purple streaks of scars and bruises underneath; it looks scarily like an abstract painting, and these, he thinks, are only the recent ones.

He is back in the living room watching a late night show, or trying to watch it, unable to concentrate between the anxiety brought on by the reunion with Rachel and the confusion brought on by the time he spent with Bruce, when he hears the cry.

"Harvey!"

It sounds like a cry for help, urgent and desperate, and he is on his feet and in the master bedroom in under five seconds. Bruce is sitting up in bed, apparently safe but clearly disoriented.

"You OK? What's the matter?"

Now he just looks embarrassed. "Sorry. I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to – "

"It's all right."

"Had a nightmare. I got to the warehouse and I couldn't get you out in time. And you both were – "

Harvey switches off the light and sits down on the bed next to him; hugging Bruce in the dark does not seem quite as weird. Kind of natural, really.

"It's all right," he repeats. "We're safe, thanks to you, thanks to Gordon. You put the Joker in Arkham. Just try and get some sleep." Whatever new threats there may be – and there surely _will_ be – they really are all right for now.

"Will you stay here?"

Now that's an unexpected request; but then, even superheroes are allowed their moments of weakness. Harvey himself, though far from a superhero, was teetering on the brink of craziness two weeks ago.

Instead of an answer, he leans back against the cushions and pulls Bruce close to him.

"Get some sleep."

And he does stay, and is once again plunged into confusion at the unexpected thrill he feels, with the other man's face buried in the crook of his neck, the muscular arms around him. Harvey has been to college, and been seriously drunk, and been very stoned, all of which makes it unsurprising that he is not completely inexperienced when it comes to men, though the dozen girlfriends he has had since then, including Rachel, would have been surprised to hear it. But this time it is the knowledge of the power wielded by the man now lying next to him, trusting and gentle, that makes his blood run faster; not the billions in the bank but the greater, more immediate power of Gotham's shadowy creature.

When he rubs his eyes in the morning light and the stab of pain tells him that he was not supposed to have rubbed his left eyelid, he discovers that Bruce is gone; and a check with security tells him that he flew out first thing in the morning.

.

_June 27, 1 PM_

"Mr Wayne, Miss Dawes, we have started our approach to Mayreau airfield…"

The attendant need not have bothered; they already see the irregular-shaped emerald shard, fringed with pristine white beaches, rising toward them amid the silver-streaked deep blue. Beautiful and peaceful, but, she thinks, a bit lonely unless you have someone to roam those beaches with. And Bruce has never been known to have brought anyone here, at least no one whose name made it into the society columns. Coming to think of it, with all that has been going on in Gotham since he came back from China, he probably has not had time to come here himself.

"That's Harvey's coin, isn't it?"

His voice cuts into her thoughts, and she catches the silver disc she has been absent-mindedly flipping.

"Yeah." She hands it over to Bruce, who looks at its two sides with a silent chuckle. "He gave it to me when he went into custody as Batman. I'm going to give it back to him, his luck obviously isn't the same without it."

"Maybe it kept _you_ safe," Bruce says, as if distractedly. "I'm sorry."

"About what?"

"I was going to give myself up. When Harvey said _Arrest the Batman_, I stepped forward but he was ahead of me. I didn't mean for him to take my place, Rachel. If it had been me, maybe none of this would have happened."

She takes his hand across the fold-out table. "You don't need to apologise. I know Harvey, he is almost as reckless as you are. I know you would have done it, Alfred told me how he and you were destroying all the evidence getting ready… And I'm glad you didn't do it." She leans in close to him. "Gotham needs its knight protector. Both of them."

His only reply is a half-smile.

"It is I who should apologise for not trusting you when you got Harvey out of Gotham." Remembering how she shouted at him outside the DA's office, demanding to know where Harvey was, makes her cringe now. "And I never thanked you."

She moves to kiss him on the lips – what the hell, with all the recent goings-on they are kind of past the kiss-on-the-cheek stage anyway – and is surprised when _he_ pulls away from her after a couple of seconds. Not self-conscious, but, for some reason, reluctant.

"You don't ever have to thank me, Rachel," is all he says until they land.

She kisses him again, on the cheek this time if that is all he will allow, just before he takes her to Harvey's room and her eyes fill with tears of happiness.

.

_July 8, 7 PM_

"Hi."

Bruce greets him in the penthouse foyer in person – maybe, Harvey figures, Alfred is getting some well-deserved rest – looking sleepy but pleased to see him nonetheless. Next to his ensemble of black pyjama pants and a white dress shirt that looks like a last-minute afterthought, Harvey is clearly over-dressed in T-shirt and slacks.

"Sorry for barging in on you. Rachel said she was going to stop by here at about seven thirty, so I figured you'd be here… Didn't mean to wake you up."

"You didn't."

Liar; but the grin is wickedly sexy.

"Drink?" Bruce calls over from the bar, and even though Harvey does not really want one, he walks over to join him.

"A glass of red… thanks. Are you off the wagon now?"

This is met with an undignified snort. "You know I don't drink… normally. Just a glass here and there. That was… a special occasion."

It is Harvey's turn to chuckle. It _was_ special, in a way.

"I just realised I never thanked you," Harvey says, raising his glass. In truth, he realised it days ago, from the very start of what had turned into a sort of tropical honeymoon for Rachel and himself, when they found out that Bruce had immediately returned to Gotham without saying goodbye to them, leaving them to enjoy the island until whenever they felt like returning, which ended up being yesterday. Considering the things Bruce had said to him the night before, Harvey could understand his wish to avoid an awkward situation; but he still wanted Bruce to know that all his help had been appreciated. And try as he might, he could not get the memory of the last night Bruce spent on Mayreau out of his head; and his idea of coming to the penthouse before Rachel did may have had something to do with that, though he is damned if he saw it leading to anything.

Until now, when he was welcomed by this green-eyed vision in monochrome silk, in bare feet and with bed-head hair, and he is no longer sure which bets are on.

Bruce takes a step toward him, and Harvey has to put down the glass because his hand is less steady than he might like it to be.

"And you'll never have to." He has an obscenely sexy voice when he lets it drop down a register.

"I _want_ to. I wouldn't be here if it hadn't been for you."

It must show in his face, the desire that goes beyond mere gratitude, because Bruce takes another step, to the very edge of what would be a socially acceptable distance between non-lovers.

"But I did try to steal Rachel from you." It is half-apology, half-challenge.

"I know." Harvey grins at him. "She told me about how you'd been in love with her since you were kids." Half acceptance, half challenge in return; but then he sees the flash of sadness in those dark green eyes and is sorry for the taunt. To hell with it; maybe it is time to stop this dancing around. "You also told me something about wanting to steal me from her." It is his turn to take half a step closer to Bruce; a full step would result in their chests touching. "But what _I_ didn't tell you is that before I knew who the Batman was, I thought it would be an interesting idea to get to know him." His words may be relatively innocent, but hopefully his tone leaves no doubts as to what that would involve. He never thought he would confess it, to Bruce of all people, but then he never knew who Bruce was until just under a month ago.

Of all possible reactions, a wistful look is not what Harvey expected.

"Him and not me."

Harvey leans in close to him; by now they have to strain to keep looking each other in the eye.

"Are you jealous?"

And this turns out the tipping point, because the next thing he knows, Bruce has a hand at the back of his neck and is kissing him like the world is ending.

"No." By the time he says it, a minute later, the answer is redundant to say the least.

xxx

Neither of them noticed when Rachel let herself into the penthouse; and by the time she is standing fifteen feet from them it is way too late to do anything about it, considering that they are in the middle of the bed in a position best described as highly compromising in a state of extreme undress. Harvey is sadly contemplating the bitter row and the possible break-up that will follow, and wonders how the hell things got so out of hand so fast, and thinks that at least there is a silver lining to it, when Bruce finally says what Harvey should have said ten seconds ago.

"Rachel, we're really sorry..."

She shakes her head; but then, instead of walking out on them or lashing out with an angry tirade, she takes a step toward the bed, and keeps on walking – sauntering – toward them.

"But this…" she says, in a strange quiet voice, "makes… everything… _perfect_."

.

_October 28, 9 PM_

"What are you doing?" Harvey is used to seeing Bruce do weird stuff when he comes to the penthouse; if it is not endless push-ups it can be headstands or archery practice; but seeing him crouched under a desk is a new thing.

"Examining print dust," Bruce mutters, half-turning to him, too preoccupied for a greeting. "I've been robbed." He points to the open safe in the recess.

"And this is your idea of sounding the alarm?" Harvey walks up to him and sits down beside him, just in time to see the smirk.

"She took my mother's pearls, tracking device and all."

"She?"

"One of the maids, the temps Alfred called in for yesterday's GCPD fundraiser. I saw her wearing them now that I've checked CCTV recordings from the service elevator. She had a hat on so I haven't seen her face."

But then it should be easy to narrow down the girl's identity. "Why were you dusting for prints?"

"I wasn't. She was." Bruce gets up. "Come on, let's see what we can find out." He motions for Harvey to follow as he pushes the button that opens the concealed passage to the Batcave elevator.

"You haven't been here in a while," Harvey remarks as Bruce wipes a layer of dust off the keyboard once they are downstairs.

"You seem determined to keep me out of work, with all the prosecution."

"It keeps you free to do_ other _things," Harvey points out, and is answered by a salacious grin.

In fact, the three of them have been pretty busy _doing other things_ in the past three or four months. And they have been the talk of the town, despite the continued disappointment of the paparazzi who, no doubt, bemoan the fact that the participants of Gotham's most famous threesome insist on having their depraved fun in private, their joint public appearances consisting mostly of official functions and the occasional low-key dinner. The rumour mill is nothing new for Bruce, of course; but luckily, the fact that Harvey and Rachel are the stars of the RICO prosecution keeps them largely immune to the taint of gossip; the intrepid pair who have put Gotham's notorious Mafia behind bars cannot be blamed for enjoying themselves outside of work.

The surprising part is how easily, how naturally the three of them clicked together. If anyone had told Harvey four months ago that he would be sharing a bed not just with Rachel but with the notorious playboy Wayne, who happened to be Rachel's long-term suitor, he would have laughed in disbelief… except that it works pretty damn perfectly in practice. Rachel loves it, having two men to please her and watching the two of them – her voyeuristic streak was news to him but by no means unwelcome; Harvey himself certainly loves it, knowing what a powerful creature is by his side, occasionally, happily, submitting to Harvey's will and to his whims. And having seen Bruce completely undone, eager, moaning and helpless under their combined caresses, Harvey is sure that Bruce loves it too. Not what he would have expected, but then, he has found out a lot of unexpected things about Bruce in the meantime, starting with the obvious fact that he is much smarter than he lets on publicly; and a lot stronger. And insatiable; that part was not unexpected, but Harvey was surprise to learn, among other things, that Bruce has sensitive hipbones and very sensitive nipples and cannot help moaning when his ears are nibbled. It is probably too much fun, and a bit too crazy, to last indefinitely; Rachel is already talking about kids and Bruce sometimes talks half-wistfully about _when you guys are married_, but Harvey is enjoying it while it lasts.

xxx

As Bruce powers up the database and uploads the prints, Harvey goes to another workstation to take a look at the CCTV recording, and is at the point where the pearl wearer shows up when Bruce calls him over.

The screen is graced, if that is the word, with the image of a heavy-set Eastern European man. "Unless she's lost a lot of weight, she was wearing someone else's fingerprints. She's good."

"She may be," Harvey concedes. "But you have a trace on the necklace. Try cross-referencing the address she went back to with police data on B&Es."

He goes back to CCTV viewing, but a couple of minutes later, his examination is interrupted by a triumphant "Gotcha!"

"Well?" Harvey asks, pulling up a chair beside Bruce.

"Selina Kyle," Bruce announces, as if introducing a star performer at a concert.

Harvey looks at the database screen. Very attractive young woman; huge, liquid dark eyes, large sensuous mouth that seems to be made for smiling and other, more lascivious things besides. Her recorded date of birth puts her at 23 years old, and she already has quite a record for her age. Numerous speed limit violations, shoplifting charges, resisting arrest; and an intriguing comment from the DSS about _the subject being surprisingly strong and agile, to be approached with caution_. What sort of a run-in would a pretty 23-year-old have with the Diplomatic Security Service to merit a comment like this?

"Looks like a nice girl," Harvey teases, running a hand up his companion's thigh.

"Stop it," Bruce laughs, but makes no move to swat his hand away, "you're distracting me. She's good, but the ground is shrinking beneath her feet," he observes more seriously, scrolling down the list of offences.

"We should tell Gordon before she fences the pearls."

Bruce shakes his head. "This isn't major crime." True, it would be overkill. "And I don't want the regular cops snooping around my place. You never know what buttons they may push by mistake. She won't fence them," he adds in a beat. "I think she likes them too much, the way she was playing with the string in the elevator. They weren't what she was after, anyway."

"What _was_ she after?"

"My fingerprints." Seeing Harvey's raised eyebrows, he explains. "That was printer toner mixed with graphite on the safe, it gives a good pull and it's untraceable."

"Maybe you should meet her for a chat, swap tips on fingerprints and all," Harvey taunts.

Bruce turns to look at him with a wicked twinkle in his eye.

"Maybe I will."

_._

_to be concluded (next week) in part 2_

_._

_Notes_

The general concept and recovery times for skin grafts come from [http www] nlm*nih*gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002982*htm, but I gloss over the details and assume the best, as it were.

Mayreau (/en*wikipedia*org/wiki/Mayreau) is one of the Grenadine islands in the Caribbean Lesser Antilles, as Bruce says; some of its "neighbour" islands are privately owned, so I figured it made sense tiny but beautiful Mayreau got a rich owner as well. Here are a few online photos to get your bearings:  
>[http www] whereisdave*commayreau3*jpg  
>[http www]extremesailing*itimmagini/galleria_del_giro/grenadine/random/mayreau*jpg  
>[http] destinationsgallery*comimages/CaribBeach106*jpg  
>and a map: [http www] paradise-islands*orggrenadines/images/Mayreau-Map*jpg

_._


	2. Chapter 2

_20 000 words, blah blah blah. I am glad I did not explicitly announce this one as such… until now :P OK, make that 30 000. It is still the same amount of story and (quasi-) plot, but with a 200-word fight scene summary becoming a 2000-word narrative before I realised it, I can no longer vouch for precise estimates. So instead of keeping it a neat two-parter, I have to make it into a *three-chapter* two-parter to stop myself from compulsively reviewing the written-but-unposted stuff. This bit is the first half of Part 2._

_By way of preface notes to this bit,_

_(a) I realised my mistake of placing the GCPD fundraiser mentioned at the end of Part 1 at "last week" instead of "yesterday", as I originally intended but then forgot, only when I woke up to the fact that neither Bruce nor Selina were apparently in any hurry to, respectively, check the safe and fence the prints. I might just about believe the first possibility but definitely not the second one. I have now corrected that._

_(b) To anyone who sees the less-jaded and less-experienced Selina as OOC, I know where you are coming from. That was the principal reason I sat on this plot for a year and did not actually think I'd type it up; she seems different from her cooler, super-competent self. My justification is the fact that this plot happens ca 8 years earlier than TDKR, and Selina is several years younger (how many years depends on the interpretation of her canon age and of the canon "reality" years, i.e. whether TDK was set in 2006 or 2008.)_

_(c) The mention of a past in Detroit comes from Selina's onscreen files in TDKR; Chicago was my addition._

_(d) You will no doubt recognise the passages of film dialogue in this chapter, similarly to the bits I stuck into Part 1. Of course these are © Christopher Nolan, but I had to quote them as I could not very well include tweaked versions of the relevant scenes without the relevant verbal exchanges._

_(e) The "dumb bitch" comment in TDKR is Daggett's, but since Daggett never shows up in person in my plot, I had Stryver say it instead. Selina's comeback to this line was too good to miss._

.

_October 29, 9 PM_

At twenty-three, Selina Kyle has life figured out; maybe not her own life, but life in general.

Put plainly, life is a bitch. Men are basically bastards and women every bit as bad; she can only really rely on herself, and any dealings with others are best based on clear-cut interests, the more quantifiable the better. Regrets are futile, emotions are undesirable, attachment is dangerous, and vulnerability is fatal in this dog-eat-dog world where the only real rule is survival of the fittest. These maxims may be distinctly lacking in warmth and fuzziness but they have worked for her so far, helping a street kid from Detroit make a splash in Chicago with a spree of daring heists and stay alive, free, and relatively well off long enough to have graduated to Gotham a few months ago. True, her hopes of breaking away from a criminal career ended nowhere – she did not have enough saved to start her own business, and her reputation preceded her through the underworld grapevine – but compared to many fellow thieves she knew back in Chicago, by now serving prison terms or slumming it in the streets or dead, Selina has no reasons to complain.

And as of tonight, her latest heist may have put the hope of eventual retirement from crime within her reach. It was a major stroke of luck, landing the commission to get Bruce Wayne's fingerprints for Daggett; the dumb playboy was too busy, between entertaining his guests and cosying up to his lovers, to have noticed a lowly maid sneaking behind the partition leading to the study to get to his safe, the only place 100% guaranteed to have his fingerprints on it and no one else's. To put the proverbial icing on the cake, she managed to crack the safe itself – tricky as hell but ultimately do-able – and steal the exquisite string of pearls he kept there, just because she could and because they were too beautiful to pass on. With the fee she is getting, she might just get to file a business application... maybe even apply to college for next fall. It is all lining up nicely.

If only Stryver, Daggett's errand boy, wasn't such a dick.

He is sitting across the table from her in the dingy, empty bar, his rodent-like face set in a rigid expression somewhere between arrogant and constipated; two of his enforcers are loitering at the counter and a third one is hovering near the door. The sooner she is out of here the better, so long as she gets paid. She takes the miniature manila envelope out of her handbag.

"Right hand, no partials." She waves the envelope in front of Stryver.

He wastes no time in snatching it from her to pull out the transparent sheet of film with the prints. "Veeerry nice."

"Not so fast, handsome," she cautions when he moves to put the prints, envelope and all, into his inside jacket pocket. "You got something for me?"

"Oh yes," he hisses.

She does not like his tone, her suspicions confirmed when she sees him motioning to his accomplice near the entrance, who promptly bolts the door, and hears footsteps as one of the bar counter-dwelling pair detaches himself from his perch and joins his boss, gun in hand. It is not going to be as easy as she may have thought, but Selina would not be where she is now, alive and successful, if she had not been thinking through the steps ahead.

"I don't know what you're planning to do with Mr Wayne's prints..." she begins, as if seriously pondering the question, skewering Stryver with a contemptuous glare, "but I'm guessing you'll need his thumb. You don't count so good, huh?"

He scowls, but quickly regains his composure as she hears a click at her ear, the gun being cocked. "I count fine," he scoffs. "In fact I am counting to ten, right now."

She wants to say something about his IQ and his courage being inversely proportionate to the distance between himself and the hired gun, but figures that this may pass over his head, or worse, may result in him scrapping the count altogether in favour of instant gratification – at her expense. No, it is best to play smart, and right now it means playing compliant.

"OK." She makes a show of resignation as she reaches for her handbag; the enforcer immediately takes it away and pulls out the phone, the only visible item there besides her apartment keys, handing it to Stryver."My friend's outside, just hit _send_." She hopes that Jen is holding up her end of the bargain, waiting outside for her signal to bring Wayne's thumbprint, for the fee Selina has promised her if for no other reason.

There is a knock at the door. Selina hopes that her relief is not obvious to Stryver and his thugs, though she still has a good deal to worry about: there is the matter of the fee she is to receive, and if they think they have the upper hand now they may decide to renegotiate it. Fortunately, they are all busy watching the door rather than the expressions playing on her face. She steals a glance in the same direction –

– and the next second her eyes fly wide and she does not even try to suppress the gasp as the black creature sweeps into the bar, instantly knocking out the man who let him in.

She has a split-second realisation that this must be the famous Batman, Gotham's masked hero, or masked bandit if some are to be believed, and is just beginning to wonder if he is here to kill Stryver or herself or all of them, and hopes for her benefit that the rumours about him using non-lethal methods are true, when the intruder presses a switch on his utility belt, and with a hiss and sputter, the dim lights inside the bar die out.

She ponders momentarily why he would have wanted to handicap himself as much as the occupants of the bar when she hears sure steps approaching the table she is sitting at, and figures that he must have night vision lenses hidden in that mask. She feels across the tabletop for where she last saw her handbag, and reaching inside the gap in the lining, pulls out her night vision goggles. It would have been better if she were the only one with a clear advantage, but being ahead of Stryver and his thugs is still better than nothing.

Presently she is looking at the bar bathed in a dim green glow, several bright green silhouettes darting around it, the masked figure, a darker outline except for the lower half of his face, obviously tracking them, calculating his next move. The enforcers are retreating toward the counter, brandishing their guns, trying to aim in the dark; the next moment she has to shield her eyes as unbearably bright white-green flashes blossom in her field of vision, Stryver's men shooting blindly in the direction of the intruder's footsteps. A couple of shots go wide, another one grazes his arm but he seems to pay no attention to it as he advances toward them. Another second later, one of them is flung unconscious into a corner; the other one tries another shot before retreating, pursued by the ghost.

This is a bad moment to be standing; she sees Stryver cowering under the table and she reckons it is time she joined him. The added benefit is that, with him effectively blind, it takes no effort at all to get his neck in a stranglehold and snake her other hand inside his jacket to retrieve the envelope with Wayne's prints. She slips it into the bosom of her low-cut dress; this way she gets to continue her negotiation directly with Daggett, maybe even on better terms.

"You dumb bitch," Stryver hisses at her.

"Nobody ever accused me of being dumb," she coos in Stryver's ear before abruptly tightening her arm around his neck; she lets go as he starts to gag and stands up abruptly, preparing to get out.

Too late; she barely has her hand on the bag when the masked attacker, having disabled the last enforcer, is instantly by her side, her arm in his iron grip.

"Not so fast."

The voice is so low it is practically toneless, a deep rumble that seemingly makes the room reverberate. Fighting the cold flash of panic, she takes stock of the situation. She is alive; the stranger does, in fact, seem disinclined to kill – seeing how easily he dispatched the thugs, she has no doubt he would have had no trouble snapping their necks, and yet did not do it. She may not be able to outrun him, or win in a fight, with the two of them on an equal footing, equipped with night vision in the dark room; but considering the low risk of being killed it is still worth trying to get away with the prints rather than lose out on her fee.

She swerves abruptly, slipping out of his grasp, and twists around, delivering a solid roundhouse kick to his midsection.

He does not seem to budge; if anything, kicking a nearly immoveable object throws her off balance and she has to take a couple of steps to regain her footing. Damn her stupid outfit; the tight satin shift and kitten heels may have seemed like a good idea as a way to put Stryver off his guard, and distract his thugs, but they are doing her no favours now, when she needs maximum range of motion and could really do with her steel stiletto heels.

She dives for the bar counter, figuring that she may smash a bottle and lunge at his face – the exposed bottom half of it – with the broken neck, but before she can get there he catches up with her. In a last-ditch attempt she kicks him in the knee – no use as her heel is no match for the hard kneepad – and then he has grabbed her from behind with both arms and is holding her fast, her back pressed against his chest, one armour-clad forearm against her shoulders, the other wrapped around her waist.

And to complete his tactical victory, he takes advantage of the element of surprise to whip the goggles away from her face and toss them on the bar counter in front of her, just beyond her reach; and the room goes pitch black.

_Shit._

For a long couple of seconds they are still, his steady breath against the back of her neck, slick Kevlar and rigid carbon fiber against her body. Clearly, he has seen her get the prints and wants them, for whatever reason, but has his hands full, literally, restraining her; she is unable to fight or run but she is damned if she is just giving them up.

A stalemate.

"Don't make me do it." The growl next to her ear is so unexpected that it makes her shudder in his grip. "I saw where you put the prints."

The worst thing, she is not sure she hates the idea of _him doing it_ enough, what with the way his arm brushed up against her breasts before settling on her shoulders. She has a flash of fantasy about him fucking her like this, her body naked against the black armour; not her usual thing, but exciting as hell. Really, really wrong thing to be imagining when she needs to fight him.

A few more seconds later, it is clear to her that he can stay like that, holding her, forever... or at least until the cops arrive. She hears the distant wail of sirens already; someone must have heard the gunshots and reported an altercation.

Her shoulders sag as she awkwardly raises her forearm – her elbow is still pinned to her body – and reaches inside the décolletage to retrieve the envelope. She has lost... but she will not surrender completely without a fight. She holds her forearm stretched in front of her, and it makes him loosen his hold on her shoulders to take the envelope from her hand.

And the instant he does so, she twists around, hoping to raise a knee up to his chest and use it as leverage to propel herself toward the counter, and the service door behind it.

He is too fast. She has barely completed the 180-degree spin when his hands are on her shoulders again, pinning her next to him, except that now they are facing each other.

She stares at the dark figure; all she sees, dimly, is the black mask and the grey outline of his chin and mouth. There is nothing left for her to do, except maybe bite him… she won't stoop to that, but there are other, more interesting ways of fighting dirty.

Instead of trying to increase the distance, she leans in toward him and carefully, as slowly as the adrenaline will let her, runs her tongue along his lips.

Stupid, stupid, stupid woman... or maybe not, but still, this is not helping, because the next thing she knows is that he is kissing her full force, hot, deep, insistent, possessive; and instead of trying to get away, she is raking her fingernails against the silky cape over his Kevlar-clad back.

Her wake-up call mercifully arrives in the shape of the approaching sirens. She pushes against him – he makes no move to restrain her now, grabs the goggles off the counter, puts them next to her eyes – no time to put them on – long enough to locate the table with her bag on it, and sprints out the back exit moments before the cops rush into the bar through the front doors.

.

_October 29, 10 PM_

_Note to self: talk to Lucius first thing tomorrow morning about the trade authorisation protocol._ The only reasons Stryver, and his boss Daggett, could have needed his prints are either to get access to restricted-access Wayne facilities, in which case they are underinformed and never realised that they would need the full-palm print, and did not consider the retina scan or the facial recognition feature; or to fake a securities transaction, in which case he has a few additions to his to-do list and meetings diary for the next couple of days. He has always thought it was a dumb idea for the SEC to have introduced the single-person thumb print verification for securities transactions above the normal trading threshold; time to file a request for change on behalf of Wayne Enterprises and to do some lobbying, asking for a co-trustee to authorise their deals as the first step. Surely Lucius won't mind.

And maybe time to add a couple more cameras inside the penthouse service elevator, pinhole cams at face level in addition to the top-mounted ones in the corners, to make sure no one gets around them by simply wearing a hat. Of course the top-mounted ones have their uses, or how else would he have got a glimpse of her cleavage…

Bruce chases the thought away. The last thing he needs is to start fantasising about a thief he apprehended… well, _nearly_ apprehended, but on the plus side he did get all his prints back, the girl outside having surrendered the thumb print to him with little more than a scowl before scampering off. Even if getting the other sheet back was more of a challenge… not to mention much more of a thrill.

In the many months that he has patrolled Gotham's shady alleys, in all his run-ins with the city underworld, he has never had a woman adversary, and he doubts he will come across another one; definitely not as tenacious as this one. Then again, she was not exactly an adversary… then again, seeing _her_ again, be it as adversary or in any other role, is not a bad prospect. Fighting aside – and he would not like to think about how far their fight may have had to go if she had anything like body armour on, or steel heels – he has to admit that he was impressed. It did not help that the GCPD file photos had done her few favours; seen in reality, her face was much more charismatic. And her body, expressed on file as dry height-and-weight statistics, is a knockout.

And she knows how to use it. It is embarrassing how thrilling, downright arousing the encounter was; and he gets plenty of thrills from his pair of partners already and is quite spoiled in that department. To think that a single kiss could have distracted him so much as to have let her escape! It has usually been _his_ privilege, be it as the Batman or as Bruce Wayne, to leave the scene with others wondering when and where the hell to he got away. This is a first for him, being on the receiving end of such courtesy; and hopefully _he_ does not leave his interlocutors with a hard-on when he escapes. Well, other than Harvey, who has taken to leering obscenely at him in their rooftop councils with Gordon… but that was probably to be expected. Harvey would probably have had a good laugh at the story of how Bruce's jewel thief gave him the slip, but he is having dinner with the Mayor; at least the man is finally listening carefully to what the DA has to say. Rachel, however, is another matter; he has seen enough of her up close by now to know that there will be no end to the teasing, and he does not feel like becoming her target this time around.

"You OK? You seem tired." Her voice cuts into his musings. Bruce looks up at her; Rachel is reading a brief for tomorrow's hearing, but is apparently keeping half an eye on Bruce, lying in her lap pretending to watch the news broadcast.

"Just a little." He hopes she takes his words at face value; he does not want to lie to her but cannot quite tell her the truth. As Harvey would say, _ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we have a conundrum_.

.

_October 31, 10 PM_

She likes charity events; perfect opportunities to mingle with rich, gullible marks, and practise a little sleight-of-hand in crowded rooms full of over-dressed people. Even if she does not walk away with a few pieces of jewellery or an array of credit cards to fund her wardrobe updates, there are always useful acquaintances to be made and rumours to be caught.

Except that this time she really did not feel like going. She already has her mark of the day, and her purpose would be much better served by spending a _quiet evening together_, that is, waiting until the old fool is asleep in front of the wraparound TV to quietly get to work on his wife's safe. But he was really eager to go to the masked ball, no doubt itching to show off his young and beautiful _friend_ to his married pals who are morosely dragging their antiquated wives around the dance floor; and Selina had to tag along.

They are halfway through the waltz when someone asks if he can cut in and steal her from her elderly companion. About time; the poor man is practically panting already, and she'd rather not give him a heart attack before she has cleaned out his wife's diamond stash; it could complicate things.

She looks up at her new partner, and the smile freezes on her lips. All she can do is stop herself from swearing out loud. Bruce smug bastard Wayne. No mask, no costume.

"Oh, you don't seem happy to see me." If anything, he sounds amused.

Of course they were never really introduced the first time around; she recalls a distracted half-smile in her direction when he picked up a snack from the tray she was carrying, but she is absolutely certain he would not have remembered her face. Still, he has the means, or the connections, or both, to have tracked her down. And that in turn means that the black ghost who took Wayne's prints from her is most likely working for _him_.

"Why didn't you call the police?" She makes no attempt to hide her distaste.

As if it was not enough that her failure to give his prints to Stryker has fucked up all chances of earning her fee and has got her in trouble with Daggett & Co., who are already threatening her with elaborate murder techniques if she does not get the set of Wayne's prints for them, hell or high water; now he has shown up to taunt her in person. If only she had something smooth or sticky to let him put his hand on… but she suspects that repeat attempts of procuring Wayne's prints will only bring the Batman back on her trail. Not that it is necessarily bad _per se_, but it will surely be disastrous professionally.

"You know I have a powerful friend who deals with things like this."

_Bingo._

"And I wanted to see who had emptied the safe the manufacturer had clearly assured me was uncrackable." Wayne looks like he is really enjoying himself, his tone half mocking, half admiring.

"Nobody told _me_ it was uncrackable." Her turn to mock, even though cracking his safe had cost her a very tense half hour.

He half-smiles in return. "It's a brazen costume for a cat burglar," he teases her next, changing the subject, tipping his head at the satin cat ears on her headband. Little does he know that her date has taken to calling her _his little kitten_, and this is Selina's homage.

"Yeah? Who are _you_ pretending to be?" She is annoyed at his amusement; at least she can needle him back a tiny bit seeing how he has no costume.

"Bruce Wayne, eccentric billionaire." Totally unruffled; so much so that she does, for a moment, wonder what really lies beneath his society mask.

"Ah… Gotham's Mr Threesome." She sees him smirk again; the mention certainly does nothing to dispel his good cheer. "Where did you lose your lovers?"

He motions with his eyes to a couple dancing at a distance, the masks doing little to disguise the dashing DA and their mutual girlfriend. "It takes two to dance, not three. Who's _your_ date?"

Her turn to steal a glance to her mark stuffing his face with a lobster tail twenty feet away. "His wife's in Ibiza. She left her diamonds behind, though. Worried they might get stolen."

He leans unexpectedly close to her ear and, even more unexpectedly, she finds the relative intimacy tantalising. "It's pronounced _Eveetha_. You wouldn't want any of these folks realising you're a crook, not a social climber."

Ah; mocking again. "You think I care what anyone in this room thinks of me?"

"I doubt you care what anyone in any room thinks of you."

She hates being the target of smooth playboy talk. "Don't condescend, Mr Wayne; you don't know a thing about me."

"Well, Selina Kyle, I know you came here from your walk up in Old Town, a modest place for a master jewel thief, which means either you're saving for retirement or you're in deep with the wrong people."

As it happens, he knows too much. Not surprising, all things considered, but still unsettling. And she is not sure what to make of his _master jewel thief_ remark; after all, her career in Gotham is still in its infancy. It could be flattery, or it could be a taunt; infuriating either way.

"You don't get to judge me just because you were born in the master bedroom of Wayne manor."

"Actually, I was born in the Regency room."

Is there any way at all to throw him off balance? Maybe she can just tell him what she really thinks, and be done with it.

"I started out doing what I had to. Once you've done what you had to, they never let you do what you want to."

"How much were they going to pay you for my prints?" he asks, an apparent non-sequitur.

The deal may have ended in spectacular failure, but she is still proud of its original terms. "A hundred grand. Not bad for an hour's work."

Wayne is visibly unimpressed. "They're worth…" he pauses to do the math. "About two hundred and fifty thousand times as much."

Yeah, like she did not know that he is filthy rich. "If you're hoping to impress me with the contents of your bank account…"

"No," he answers, almost cheerfully. "Just trying to tell you that you should have bargained better. You know, maybe _I_ should pay you the hundred grand. I'm really grateful to you for your fingerprints caper. It helped me deal with several security weaknesses I hadn't paid enough attention to."

Yeah, right. Even if his offer were real, her pride would balk at it. Not to mention that Daggett would have her killed the moment he found out.

"No thanks. I prefer to keep my independence from big business."

"You don't have to be a thief to stay independent." Where the hell did _this _come from? "Start fresh."

Has he been reading her thoughts? And yet Selina herself is beginning to suspect that her retirement from crime is just a pipe dream. "There's no fresh start in today's world. Any 12 year old with a cell phone can find out what you did. Everything we do is collated and quantified, everything sticks."

"Is that how you justify stealing?"

_What do you care about how I justify it, billionaire boy?_ "I take what I need from those who have more than enough, I don't stand on the shoulders of people who have less." She may be a selfish loner, but she believes in fairness and hopes for a sort of universal justice… most of the time.

"Robin Hood?"

She has had it with the taunting. "I think I'd do more to help someone than most of the people in this room… than you." Relatively speaking, she is right; at least she does not steal from those poorer than herself. Unlike most of the rich bastards here who are happy to squeeze them dry.

"You think maybe you're assuming a little too much?"

And if she is, so what? "Maybe you're being unrealistic about what's really in your pants other than your wallet."

"Ouch." His voice is sarcastic but he does look a bit offended. Finally, a minor hit.

Not that she is allowed to enjoy her victory for long. The dance has not even finished when he sneaks a hand to the back of her neck, and she knows the reason. Of course she knew this was the reason he was dancing with her in the first place, even if she stupidly forgot it somewhere along the way.

"Those pearls do look better on you than they did in my safe, but still I can't let you keep them."

He lifts the lustrous string off her neck, but before he can disappear into the crowd, Selina thinks she still has a trick up her sleeve to sweeten the sour pill of parting with the necklace. She leans in and kisses him, as forcefully as circumstances will allow; he is surprised but not taken aback, and she is in turn surprised by the electric sensation of their lips and tongues touching, and almost has to remind herself that the real purpose of the kiss is to give herself time to rummage in his pocket.

She finds her prize a second later, the flimsy paper square of what she knows to be a parking valet's receipt. Good; rather than go back to her date a sore loser and have to explain the loss of her necklace, she might as well take a spin in whatever fancy ride rich boy took here.

Her accidental reward turns out to be a lot better than she imagined. She was thinking the ticket would produce something staid like a Bentley or a Rolls, or something overly flashy like a red Ferrari… not that she would have complained about either. But when the Aventador, three and a half thousand pounds of black beast oozing power and speed, rolls up toward her, she struggles to keep the silly grin off her face.

The valet is sufficiently charmed by the alluring smile she regales him with, and sufficiently mesmerised by her low-cut dress, to overlook the fact that the person getting into the driver's seat looks different, or at least is a different gender, from the person who got out of it an hour ago.

Still, she figures it is best to cover her bets.

"Thank you." She flashes the man another smile as she fishes a twenty out of her handbag. "I'm so tired already. My husband back there said he's taking a cab home."

xxx

This is pure adrenaline. No wonder the car looks like a stealth fighter on wheels; she feels like she is flying. By now the city looks empty, the poor masses drinking their sorrows away at tacky Halloween parades downtown, the cops too busy watching over them to patrol deserted streets elsewhere, and the rich bastards enjoying their private parties; and Selina can push down on the accelerator until the speed gauge is hovering around the 200 mph mark. And for these few blissful minutes, she is happy, and hopeful, and free. _Thank you, Mr Wayne_. Too bad her ride will have to end.

And it looks like it is about to end a lot sooner than she thought.

The motorbike seemingly comes out of nowhere, right after she gets off at the exit nearest to Old Town. She thought she might drive this beauty through her neighbourhood before getting onto the northbound highway on its other side for another loop, but the moment she sees and hears the pursuer and turns into a narrow lane as a shortcut, the rider shoots past her in the nearly non-existent gap between the Lamborghini's right side and the brick wall, and executes an impossibly tight turn, coming to a halt a couple of feet in front of the Aventador's bumper.

_What. The. Fuck._

She is staring, open-mouthed, at the silver monster in front of her, looking like a cross between a weapon and a runaway piece of industrial machinery. Save for the wide wheels at either end, the thing is all engine. Dodge Tomahawk; she recalls looking enviously at pictures and specs in a magazine; 350 mph top speed. No wonder he overtook her; the Aventador only goes to 220. Someone would have to be seriously good, and seriously crazy, to ride this. _Please don't let it be that Batman menace again. Then again… maybe… _

Her eyes are in danger of leaving their sockets when the rider shakes off the black helmet, and she recognises Wayne.

For an instant she thinks of backing out of the alley… but that will be a short and sure road to a checkmate. She sees now that the lane ahead gets too narrow, and turns too sharply at the end, for her to make it through; Wayne need not have bothered with his dramatic flourish of a U-turn, except to show off. And the moment he sees her backing out he will shoot past her, much faster and more manoeuvrable than she, and will block her retreat on the other side.

Her shoulders slump. The man is doggedly determined to ruin her night.

She kills the headlights and the engine, opens the door and steps out, not looking forward to the continued mockery and to the short but humiliating walk to her apartment three blocks away.

Well, at least there is a way to avoid the mockery part.

Without sparing a single glance in his direction, no matter how beautiful the bike, she turns and starts walking the way she came, slamming the driver's-side door as she brushes past it.

She realises her mistake too late. The clang of the door gave him just enough sound distraction to leap off the bike and reach her in a couple of long strides without her hearing him. Damn the stupid heels; she cannot even run. Maybe she can fight him; surely he is too pampered to have serious muscle?

And apparently Selina is too stupid to have serious risk assessment ability, because the next thing she knows, he pins her against the wall with surprising ease.

_I am so fucked._ The last thing she needs in this life is for this billionaire brat to beat her up in a fit of fury over her antics, or try to force himself on her. She reflexively tries to knee him in the groin, but he is standing way too close; all she manages to do in such close proximity, without room for manoeuvre, is pressing her leg against his crotch… the effect of which was far from what she had intended, though not really disappointing, what with the way her own belly tightens at the contact.

_Seriously, girl, get your shit together._

No help; they stand and stare at each other from inches apart in the darkness of the alley, and with every passing second she feels her will to resist draining away.

Until he lets go of her and takes a step back; and although she is free, she still makes no move to leave.

"You can take the car if you want." He is standing there, perhaps three feet away, watching her.

She shakes her head.

"What _do_ you want?" It seems like an honest question, of all things.

Trouble is, she is damned if she knows.

"I don't know…" She shrugs. "You win. The keys are in the ignition."

She turns to leave, and he stops her again, though this time he does not even need to touch her.

"Selina…" It sounds almost like a plea. _Selina_, not _Miss Kyle._

She turns back to face him and takes a step in his direction. "What do _you_ want?"

She does not quite see his expression, with the only ambient light coming from behind his back, but she hears the chuckle. "_That_ should be embarrassingly obvious."

This time they both take a step toward each other, and when his lips brush against hers she has to steady herself against the back of the Lamborghini for support because, of all the crazy things, she is in danger of swooning like a teenager. He immediately puts an arm around her to steady her; at least she has managed to spin around so that her face is in the shadow now; but they do not stop kissing. For someone as strong as he obviously is, he is incredibly gentle, almost timid, except that she can tell it for what it is: he is teasing her, tempting her, leading her on, but all the while she is aware of his strength, of the predator stirring within the dark eyes. This is worlds apart from the forceful kiss she shared with the masked stranger two nights ago, but every bit as intoxicating; and before she knows it her hand goes to the back of his head, fingers running through his hair, even as her other hand goes for his crotch and he moans in appreciation. She can already imagine herself undressing him, and can think of a dozen things she would like to do to him, and at least as many she would want him to do to her; and she is almost angry when he pulls away.

"How about we call a truce for tonight and go have a drink?"

_Really, Mr Wayne? Aren't we a bit past that stage, all things considered?_ "How about we skip the drink, go to your place, and fuck each other's brains out."

He laughs against her cheek. "I suppose that's a more direct way of putting it."

Next thing she knows, he has jumped over the back of the car to the passenger side.

"You drive," she hears him call out at her. "You know the way."

.

_to be concluded_

.

_Endnotes_

With the confusion resulting from the canon action date vs film release date differences vs my tweaked-canon plot, I have ended up with a Lamborghini Aventador in 2008; it was released in 2011 ;) Let's just say we operate in a parallel reality here.

I did not think I'd do any research for this plot on account of the fluff quotient, and have pleasantly surprised myself :P when looking for a motorbike that could outrun the Aventador. The Dodge Tomahawk is both real (as is its 350 mph top speed) and gorgeous; you can see it if you scroll to the bottom of [ www] fastestmotorcycle*org/ , or do a Google image search for Dodge Tomahawk. Or both ;)

And on the subject of masques, today's Daily Telegraph had an amusing photo gallery of superheroes and sci fi characters transported into the 16th century. The relevant ones are:

[h t t p] /i*telegraph*co*uk/multimedia/archive/03111/superheroes-batman_3111204k*jpg

[h t t p] /i*telegraph*co*uk/multimedia/archive/03111/superheroes-catwom_3111207k*jpg

[h t t p] /i*telegraph*co*uk/multimedia/archive/03111/superheroes-joker_3111208k*jpg

The entire gallery is at

[h t t p] /www*telegraph*co*uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/11240369/Superheroes-and-sci-fi-stars-given-16th-century-makeover-by-Sacha-Goldberger*html Most of the changes consist of adding the ruffled collars, but there are a few amusing ones, including Superman, Spiderman, Star Wars characters, Captain America et al.


	3. Chapter 3

_I made up Harvey's backstory in this part but could not post the text without checking if I could find any canon references, or failing that, any relevant details from Aaron Eckhart's bio, first. Did not see canon info on his story in the Nolanverse (though I am sure the comic book canon has tons), but was really happy when I saw Eckhart's bio: born and grew up in Cupertino, CA, spent three years surfing in Hawaii, and played rugby and football (as in soccer). I swear I did not know this when I was writing my version : )_

_And while the CleanSlate may be kind of implausible, it *is* canon ; )_

.

_November 1, 11 AM_

She wakes up in a blissful daze. It takes a second to remember that her tired muscles are not the result of a gym workout but of a different, and infinitely more enjoyable, kind of exercise the night before. Or earlier this morning, depending on how you look at it; by the time they were falling asleep for the second time she could see light creeping up behind the mesh blinds.

She stretches in the luxurious bed and slowly opens her eyes, squinting at the sunlight bathing the open space in pale gold. The bed is in the corner of an enormous loft, nominally separated from the rest of it by frosted-glass screens. The penthouse still looks the way she remembers it from the party where she did her ill-fated – or extremely fortunate, depending on whether the consequences are viewed professionally or personally – stint as a maid: huge, empty, too orderly, kind of impersonal. Like a corporate venue appropriated by a very rich squatter.

Her host, for that matter, is nowhere to be seen.

She turns her head to the bedside chest; her handbag must be somewhere here, unless, of course, she left it next to the entrance when they got sidetracked into kissing again. At least she can check her phone to see what time it is. She does not see the bag, but there is a folded black silk robe on top of the chest... and an open jewellery box on top of _that_, the pearls nestled inside below a folded note. _Consider these on loan as a consolation prize for losing out on the other deal._ _PS I'd like to see you again._ She smiles, but thinks that it would be very unwise to give in to that temptation. _I don't think so_. Her life is already complicated enough; and so is his. She'll take him up on the offer of borrowing the pearls, though.

For now, her immediate challenge is getting out of this place in the owner's absence – assuming that he is, in fact, absent. She recalls him punching multiple code sequences into his smartphone on the way to the garage and to the penthouse itself, which he explained as disabling alarms and granting himself access to his apartment; and recalls his private garage looking like a nuclear bunker, with several shuttered bays hiding who knows what manner of fast toys. At this rate, getting out is unlikely to be as straightforward as opening the door. But she is not a safecracker for nothing.

First things first, however. A quick shower later, she puts on the robe and strolls into the kitchen thinking she might at least get something to eat before working her way out of here; and is surprised to see the elderly man sitting there reading a paper. He looks up at her, and she recognises the face and recalls the name: Alfred Pennyworth, Wayne's butler, the Brit; their temporary boss at the party. But if he recognises _her_ he gives no outward sign of it.

"Good morning."

"Hi." Her embarrassment is not all fake; _morning_ is something of a relative term, with the time just shy of noon.

"I've made you breakfast." He takes a huge linen napkin off a silver tray on the sideboard and brings it over to the table. "But I didn't want to wake you up so I waited until you were up on your own. Tell me how you like your coffee."

"Strong." She grins, and he mirrors her expression with a smile of his own. She still needs to wake up. On the upside, she does not need to worry about getting out.

"Master Wayne asked me to apologise to you for not greeting you this morning. He had to go to an early meeting." Yeah, and probably had to swing by to pick up the Tomahawk from the Old Town alley; she doubts he would have found many volunteers reckless enough to drive it for him. Not that _she_ would mind doing it. "I'm Alfred Pennyworth, by the way." He extends his hand, keeping up the pretence of this being their first meeting.

OK; she can play along. "Nice to meet you." She shakes his hand. "Selina Kyle."

"The pleasure is all mine. It' s nice to see a beautiful young lady over here."

He talks as if it were a rare occasion. In reality she reckons she must be #1001... or 10001. "You've got to be kidding me," she says wryly just under her breath, not expecting a reply but still loud enough for him to hear.

He does reply. "Don't believe all the rumours," he says as he hands her the coffee. And she could bet that she did not just imagine the wink. Is this guy seriously trying to set her up with his charge?

She grins at him. "Thank you Alfred. I'll keep that in mind."

.

_an evening in mid-November_

"So what's really going on between you and this Batman character?" she taunts him. A big part of it is real curiosity; she would not think a billionaire playboy and a masked vigilante would make natural best pals, and the fact that the Batman was willing to risk the enforcers' bullets and being arrested by the cops to get the prints back to Bruce is intriguing.

Bruce never takes his eyes off her, but his face is completely inscrutable.

"Well?"

"He's my... partner," he finally says. Usually he is less reluctant to answer her on most matters, and Selina is pretty sure she is finally on to something here.

"Oh." She nods at him knowingly. Well, _that_ would explain a few things.

Except that the next thing she knows, Bruce is laughing at her.

"I mean _business_ partner." Belatedly, he has realised the meaning of his words.

"Oh," she says again, looking sceptical. "A couple of weeks ago you called him a friend. Did you two have a falling out? Is he jealous?"

He shakes his head, still grinning. "No, we're still... we're both friends and business partners, sort of. But it's not what you think..."

"Really?" She does not even need to exaggerate her disbelief. "I wonder what your _other_ two friends and partners have to say about that, assuming that they know."

"Oh, they do know. No, really..."

"Mr Wayne, are you trying to bullshit me?"

He makes a good pretence of being offended. "Not at all. And since when are we on a last-name basis?"

The truth is, she can hardly remember the time when they were _not_ on a _first_-name basis; pretty natural really, considering how their meeting went. But she is not so easily led astray.

"OK, _Bruce_," she leans in close to him across the dinner table, "I still think you aren't telling me the truth."

"What makes you think that?"

"The scars, for one thing." She has to admit, she was pretty shocked when she saw him with the lights on; she has seen a few hardened criminals in her time, street fighters, jailbirds, and Bruce could compete with any of those for the number of scars he is sporting. And the bruises; she recalls when he cancelled a date a week earlier and showed up the next evening with his chest and shoulders all black and blue. No one with this kind of money would endure this sort of treatment from anyone else unless he really wanted to. "Are you seriously expecting me to believe you did _not_ get them in BDSM sessions?"

He looks to be really having fun now. Does not bode well for her theory.

"Absolutely not. Not that I really mind that sort of thing..." he adds in a lower voice, smirking at her.

Oh yes, she _knows_; but _she_ does not leave him all bruised. Occasional scratches do not count.

"What _is_ it, then?"

"I've done a lot of extreme sports. Still do. And martial arts."

"In the office, I presume." To the best of her recollection, he was not anywhere conducive to extreme sports _or_ martial arts before he showed up with those bruises last week.

"Well, we do test military equipment and stuff at Wayne, you know. And I really like getting my hands on it. And sometimes things don't go as expected. I don't mind, really."

"_You_ obviously don't. What about your other lovers?" By now excluding herself from the designation would be a misstatement. "Are they OK with you getting beaten up?"

"They tease me just like you do," he admits. "But we're in a kind of open arrangement anyway..."

Well, obviously, considering the way he has spent the past couple of weeks. She doubts that it is open all the way, though; Bruce may be the one entitled to fooling around, but she is pretty sure, having seen the other two on a couple of occasions, that other than _him_, they only have eyes for each other.

"I see." She figures she will not get much further by continuing her inquiries. Maybe he really gets these from martial arts training.

But nothing she has heard so far has got her any closer to figuring out why he is so intent on punishing himself in the first place.

xxx

Selina was not deceiving herself when she thought it unlikely that she would go along with Bruce's suggestion of _seeing her again_. But she did not reckon on Bruce.

...who just _happened_ to keep running into her at society functions. She has been trying to make up for the loss of her fingerprints fee by drumming up new business, as it were; and he has been really insufferable in how he kept getting in the way. Normally he has a small crowd of hangers-on and hopeful women milling around waiting to talk to him; and it was almost funny watching him give them all the slip to come up and talk to _her_, politely but insistently stealing her away from whatever mark she had been charming. She tried taunting him about having a hidden agenda where she was concerned; a taunt dismissed, with an irresistibly charming smile, as ignoring _the very obvious agenda of wanting to get her into bed_. After three such occasions, she gave up and just went to the next one alone, knowing that he would find her there, heaven knows how.

When he told her, at the end of that evening, that the pearls had a tracker in the clasp that was recharged whenever they were in the box, she gave him a long dirty look, called him a _perverted stalker_, and hit him with a pillow.

But it did nothing to stop her wearing the pearls. Or putting them back in the box afterwards.

.

_an evening in late November_

"Well... what did you think?"

They are on their way back from drinks and dinner with his threesome partners, who just came back to Gotham after spending Thanksgiving with the Dent family in California, and she has to admit that the evening went better than she may have expected. True, the famous Rachel struck her as rather bossy, and too self-righteous at times, but she could still see how these three could be a good match in bed... well, just about, considering that she has no qualms about having taken the other couple's place for the past month. Harvey Dent is certainly one hell of a charming guy. Even with the thin vertical scar running down the middle of his face, he still looks handsome; and apparently is happy to make light of it, calling himself _Harvey Two-Face_ and telling her how he used to be the scourge of Internal Affairs and how Bruce pretty much saved him from insanity by getting him out of Gotham and onto the operating table in the wake of the Joker's attempt on his life. Still, he is almost too much of a nice guy for her; a kind of Boy Scout, relentlessly energetic and optimistic, or at least a typical Californian golden boy, despite having left Berkeley and moved to Gotham sixteen years ago. His idea of fun – presumably, outside the bedroom – is going to the beach for a day of surfing or hanging out with pals at a big game. All things considered, she would rather spend time with Bruce in spite of, or maybe even because of, the quiet spells when he gets brooding and won't say a word for hours; they have spent enough time in each other's company by now for her to have seen it, and she is comfortable with it.

"I liked them." Certainly not an exaggeration in Dent's case. "I can see how the three of you could work as a relationship... You sure you aren't sorry about it all ending?"

By now it does look to be ending; Harvey and Rachel are planning to get married next June and Rachel is obviously excited about kids, and Harvey looks to share her excitement.

Bruce turns away from watching the road ahead to look at her for a second. "Good things never last, you know." She cannot tell if he is light-hearted or wistful. "You've seen the way they are about kids and all. They'll make a great family."

"And you?"

This time he is serious for sure. "I don't think I'm ready for that myself."

Well, at least it makes two of them.

"And besides, I know we'll always stay friends. That's not going to change."

Sure; with the three of them being from the same social circle – well, a _similar_ social circle, broadly defined – they have that luxury. She very much doubts that _she_ and Bruce will stay friends when they are done.

But for now she can enjoy it while it lasts.

xxx

By the time it hit her that they were not just sleeping together but actually _dating_, they had been going out for a month, which, as far as she has heard from rumours, is twice the record any girl other than Rachel has managed to stay by Bruce Wayne's side before being swapped for a new one.

It did not exactly start as going out; it was more a matter of Bruce finding her – _stalking_ her, as she now jokingly calls it – at the various posh venues. But then they figured they'd rather ditch the pretence and just meet to go wherever they felt like going... which ended up being an entirely different kind of place.

Not that it immediately started that way. The first place he took her to for dinner was the glitzy restaurant he owns in downtown Gotham; and he treated her to the fanciest dinner imaginable there, caviar and champagne and truffles and a bottle of Chateau Margaux older than herself... only to be embarrassed by her subsequent admission that this sort of place reminded her too much of, well, _work_; rich marks and diamond-laden wives and snooty _maitre d_'s. She can pull off the classy-lady image flawlessly, but she'd rather not have to do it when enjoying herself with a man she actually likes spending time with. And on hearing that, he immediately changed tack.

The next place he took her to was a tiny corner restaurant on the edge of Old Town; and she was not at all exaggerating when she called that occasion the best Thai dinner she had ever had. It went on from there; they would wander around Gotham's less glamorous districts in search of places, authentic Chinese and good Peruvian and real Indian; they would practically venture into the Narrows to hang out at the edgy bars there and listen to live performers. On the first such excursion she was slightly apprehensive as to how he would find himself in places like that, and dismissed it as a rich boy's curiosity-fuelled and ultimately short-lived foray into the underside of city life... until she saw him completely blend in there, and not just the clothes; perfectly at ease.

Their excursions have not been limited to Gotham, either, and he surprised her here as well. She had suspected, at the back of her mind, that his mention of _having done a lot of extreme sports_ had an element of innocent bragging about it; and was left amazed when he took her for a long weekend in the Rockies and she saw what he could do hang-gliding and rock climbing; Selina is quite a good climber herself, though her mastery of it has more to do with the urban jungle than actual rocks, but he really gave her a run for her money there. If anything, seeing how good he is makes his scars and bruises even more improbable; there is no way he would repeatedly get these injuries given his proficiency. And yet, for someone so good, he goes against the active-sports aficionado type, preferring a low profile and anonymity to boasting about his skill. When she said she'd rather go someplace warm and laid-back for Thanksgiving as an antidote to the exhilarating but gruelling Rockies experience, he took her to Mayreau, a mini-paradise of a tropical island, and they had a blissful four days walking on the beach at sunset, having picnics by the sea under the stars, and going skinny dipping at night... all very relaxing except for the small matter of him flying her there _himself_ in a four-seater from Miami; he is an accomplished pilot but the 10-hour flight each way was nothing to be sneered at... though the views of the Caribbean were utterly spectacular. Now if only all the things he has been getting her into left any time for her to make money... oh well, she'll be paying for this later. Might as well have fun now.

The part she still cannot understand is why he prefers being known as a fool and as something of a jerk, seeing how he is better than his reputation. He talks about most people being shallow, and most society friendships being fake, and about being able to afford spending time with who he wants to rather than who he has to, and about how he _could have 300 people partying with him every day, none of whom he would care about_... all of which is true but none of which explains it fully, or fully accounts for him having only two real friends, who he happens to have slept with.

Then again, maybe it is the force of habit, for a kid who grew up a lonely orphan and spent years roaming the world. She can certainly identify with the orphan part, having herself escaped a dank, dreary orphanage in Detroit to live in the streets aged twelve, and is almost irrationally ashamed when he tells her that the pearls she stole and that he has ended up lending to her were worn by his mother the day she was killed. But all she has seen of the world are the slums of Detroit, and then Chicago and Gotham, and now also Mayreau and the Rockies. He keeps asking her where she would like to go, and suggests breathtaking alternatives, and she feels spoiled for choice. But he also keeps asking her what she would like to do with her life, and she keeps dismissing herself as a criminal, and hopes that he eventually drops the subject.

.

_an evening in mid-December_

...which he does not.

"Why won't you let me help? You know I have more money than I know what to do with. OK, most of it goes to charity, but it still leaves a large chunk for me. I don't want you to write yourself off as a crook for the rest of your life when you can be so much more."

"Because," she starts; they have been over this several times already, "I don't want to take money from you for sleeping with me."

He immediately bristles at her choice of words, as she knew he would. "That's not what it is."

She knows; but still won't go for it. "Stealing is my means of making a living. I'm good at it."

"There are several other things you're good at," he argues. "I don't mean what you're thinking." He sounds almost stern. "Martial arts instructor, for one." He has seen her practicing, though has stubbornly refused to practice _against_ her.

He has a point there, of course; that is what Selina herself thought she would do if she ever got the chance. Kick men's asses and give women some badly needed lessons in self-defence. But she is no longer sure it would ever work.

"And you can use your safecracking expertise and knowledge of criminal methods in other ways."

"As in...?"

"Jim Gordon, the Commissioner, was saying the other day – well, not to me, but it comes from a trusted source – that he could really use someone who could give his forensics team a hand. Someone who knows how crooks circumvent security, disable alarms and open locks."

"And you think he'll take kindly to my rap sheet." True, it does not include time in prison; but the number of arrests alone is pretty imposing.

"He's known for giving people second chances."

"Yeah, as _your boyfriend_ said, so much so that he's got crooked cops at MCU that he should have long ago gotten rid of."

"There are ways of getting around your history, if that's what worries you."

She says nothing. She knows what he means: he will talk to Harvey, who will vouch for her to Gordon, who will vouch for her to the people she would be dealing with... none of which will help once they look up her record. To them, she will always be a wolf in sheep's clothing.

"Ever heard of the CleanSlate?"

The question takes her by surprise. Yes, she has heard of it; she is, however, surprised that Bruce has.

"The targeted database record eraser? Yeah, I heard of it. Mostly as a gangland myth. Honestly, sounds too good to be true."

"What if it's real?"

She keeps looking at him.

"What if I said I could try and see if I could get my hands on the code?"

"Would be nice." Totally unrealistic, but nice.

"Would you stop stealing then?"

"I might."

"So we're back to the original question. What would you like to do then?"

Right; he can dream. Then again, so can she.

"Well, like you say, I could think of a few things. There's martial arts as my main plan, and the Gordon option might work in principle. Then there's fancier stuff like test driving and jewellery design..."

She sees his opinion of each choice reflected in his face; nodding at the Gordon mention, frowning at the car testing, intrigued by the jewellery idea. She wonders what he would make of the one career choice she left off the list: _dominatrix_. Then again, she knows his reaction already. He would be protesting to high heaven because he has too much fun having her do that in private to be willing to share. Not that they have any set rules or patterns; the best part is that their sexual adventures span a pretty broad range.

"OK." He winks at her. "We'll think of something."

She loves him for trying to find a way out for her, even if she knows it to be impossible.

xxx

How and when did it happen, in retrospect? What started as a thrill, a sexual adventure six weeks ago became a relationship before she even realised it, and has now brought her dangerously close to falling in love. It is not just sex, and not just fun weekends. She is by now used to just calling him from time to time in the middle of the day, or in the evening on the increasingly rare occasions she goes back to her place, just to talk; he nearly always answers, or else calls back. She used to be supremely cynical about men; good luck staying cynical about this particular man... But that does nothing to change the fact that it is too good to last, and that she bit off more than she could chew, and will have to leave him to cut her losses, sooner rather than later. Being his girlfriend may feel like living the fairytale, but it won't work out in the long run. All it will do is wreck her career as a thief, and may do much more damage than that, what with the way Daggett and his goons have been cornering her, demanding that she use her status as Bruce's girlfriend to find out what additional security and authorisation measures he has put in place to safeguard against stock market fraud, and bring the info to them, along with his prints, _or else_. Good luck trying to explain to them that she cannot steal from the one man who has been genuinely nice to her. No, the only way out is to leave him, that way they can no longer pressure her, and stick it out on her own. To hell with it; she might as well try hooking up with the Batman, the sex is bound to be good and she is more ambivalent about hurting _him_... except that the Batman is a hero, and heroes usually do not live long, so it won't last either. Even if she herself is alive to see it end.

.

_December 24, 7 PM_

He has never liked Christmas much; not since he was eight, anyway. He has no shortage of invites to glitzy New Year's Eve parties, but there is nothing like the quintessential family holiday to ratchet up the feeling of loneliness and stir up echoes of guilt. He never wanted to celebrate it, though Alfred stoically insisted on decorating the tree every year until he went to Princeton. The years in Asia were a reprieve, in a way. Last year Alfred joined him for a glass of sherry and went to bed, his admonition for Bruce to _do something he enjoys, for once_ falling on deaf ears as he went back to the rooftops right after midnight. This year Alfred is not here, visiting relatives in Surrey, but it looks like all hope to follow his old butler's advice a year later is vanishing into thin air. A couple of months ago Rachel and Harvey talked about him joining them for dinner at her mother's house upstate before they go to stay with his family in California for a few days. At least he can claim to have a right to it as the son of her former employers and Rachel's longtime friend. He still backed out of it, even after Rachel said last week that _he can bring along his new girlfriend_. At that point he thought it would be nicer for the two of them to spend it, quietly, at his place.

Now it looks like it may not happen, either.

He knows Selina well enough by now to see that she has not been her usual self these past three days. Distracted, distant, downright jumpy at times; her usual quips, sultry voice, and graceful, fluid movements conspicuous by their absence. Now she is pretending to watch the TV, curled up in a ball in the armchair, arms hugging her knees; but he suspects it is little more than her way of keeping a distance from him. And it hurts.

At a quarter past seven she gets out of the chair and walks over to the couch where he is absent-mindedly flipping through a mountaineering magazine, pretending not to be watching her, and stops two feet away, ignoring his outstretched hand inviting her to join him, her face set.

"What's up?"

He almost does not want to hear her answer.

She shrugs. "Not much." The same distant voice. "Listen, I've got to go – "

"Go?" He gets up and takes a step toward her, but she takes a step back, and he stops in his tracks.

"There's something I need to do now. If I can make it back later tonight – "

"But I thought we were going to spend Christmas together. I thought you wanted to – "

"I – listen… I'll see if I can make it back by midnight. Sorry for ruining your holiday – "

"_My_ holiday? Selina... I thought – I thought you wanted to be here…"

"It's not that I don't want to, Bruce." She sounds scarily like Rachel when she was officially dumping him a few months ago. "I can't."

"What is it? What's so urgent that it can't wait until tomorrow?" He knows, of course, and rather than drag it out of her, he figures he might as well tell her himself. "You've got a heist planned."

A moment ago she was looking awkward; now she looks defensive. Bad call.

"And what if I do?" Her voice gets more animated as she continues. "This is what I do, what I've done all my life. I'm a thief, Bruce, you can't pretend I'm not. I must do this now, and if it's not what you expect of me, then I'm sorry to disappoint you. But you can't stop me."

He shakes his head. He is not even trying to stop her. But her determination to stick to the criminal life is, at times, infuriating.

"Why do you insist on staying a thief? Why not do something that won't get you into prison?" Or worse; he does not know how much _she_ knows about what is going on in the city. If she knows that Daggett, her former employer, has been looking far and wide for leads that can help him ruin Wayne's business empire and will not stop short of using her as leverage, if needed; that Jonathan Crane is still at large and allegedly working on a devastatingly effective new drug; that now that the heads of the local Mafia are behind bars, Gotham's junkies, deprived of their drug supply, are getting desperate and homicidally aggressive, capable of anything to get enough money to score a hit, with drugs increasingly expensive after the distribution network collapsed. None of which he can tell her without her questioning his sources; and he cannot very well explain that he has been getting regular updates on Gotham's criminals from the Batman as it will only raise more questions. He can, however, remind her that there are ways she can leave her criminal history behind. "I've talked to Harvey about your arrest record." No need for her to know that it earned him the taunt of a _promiscuous manwhore_. "He says there may be a way to suppress your record, at least for a while, for a sort of probation period, if you're willing to come clean and collaborate with Gordon – "

She shakes her head before he can even bring up the CleanSlate, and how close he is to signing a deal to get it. "You know, you shouldn't have given up what you had with them for me. It just – "

"It wouldn't have lasted much longer anyway."

"And you think _this_ would?"

Why is she insisting on saying things she should know would hurt him? "It's been good so far. Why not live and see and not declare it hopeless?"

Her shoulders sag, and she looks really sad for a moment before the familiar cynical façade comes up instead. "We live in the real world, Bruce, and that's not how the real world works. Fairytales belong in books."

It feels like instead of his penthouse, he is standing outside in the freezing cold. "You're leaving me."

She does not reply. Instead she takes the pearls off her neck and hands them to him.

"You know, you can still keep them," he says, trying to keep his voice steady. At least that way they'll meet again, and who knows, she might, just might change her mind about staying with him. "They do look better on you than in the safe." He does not even try smiling.

She shakes her head again, and again her wistful expression is quickly replaced by that worldly, jaded look. "Come on, it's not like you're going to have trouble finding pretty girls to sleep with…"

Why has she suddenly become so cruel? "Not girls like you. Do you think that's all you've been to me?" He wants to say that she is one of five people in the world with whom he can be himself, two of whom are getting married and the other two are Alfred and Lucius; but stops himself. It comes close to begging, and he cannot beg her. It never worked on Rachel, not until he let go of her and not until she literally found him in bed with her fiancé; and he doubts it would ever work on Selina at all. Why is it that the two women he has loved have both dumped him? He never even told her he loved her, and now it is too late, and he will not use it as a last-ditch argument, no matter how much it hurts to see her go.

She does not answer. She takes a tiny step toward him, cranes her neck to kiss him on the cheek, as if afraid it might become something more personal, grabs her coat and walks out, leaving him alone in his huge, empty glass-walled cage.

.

_December 24, 9 PM_

_Enough daydreaming; wake up and smell the rotten dump of reality, kiddo_. She shakes her head, trying, not very successfully, to clear her thoughts before she does the mental checklist of the gadgets she needs to pack. At least this particular commission may really help her, in more ways than one. When she heard that Daggett was sniffing around for a good safecracker who could get into Earle's vault, and she made it known that she was interested, she figured he would dismiss her out of hand for having let him down, big time, over Wayne, the prints, and not feeding him info on the new security measures. And, she has to confess, she was pleasantly surprised when he offered her the job. She has absolutely no reservations about making old crook Bill Earle a little poorer, and this way, she might get back into Daggett's good graces and rack up enough credit with him to stay in the game. Although it is still very much an open question whether Daggett keeps her alive at the end of this new deal. But then, she _is_ really good technically.

And if she tries to look at things coolly and rationally, she is better off alone. Bruce himself said it: _good things never last_; at least it stayed good all the way to the end, and relatively speaking, it still ended on a high, no bitter rows or recriminations. She tries to chase away the memory of leaving him, miserable and alone, in the penthouse on Christmas Eve. It is for the best, easier for her and safer for him, even if he himself does not know it. They live in the same city but in different worlds; she has made a living balancing on the edge of his world but is not really part of it. She just has to find a way to check event guest lists in advance, and learn to ignore his face in the gossip columns. Or maybe she can go back to Chicago… though if her former partners in crime ever find out, they will never stop mocking her as _the idiot who was dating Bruce Wayne and walked out on him because he was too nice_. Still, regardless of the occasional bout of daydreaming, she is sure there is no way she can stay with him and build a life beyond theft.

Even if she survives. In reality she figures that she might be dead by midnight; or worse than dead.

OK, enough of that. She zips up her catsuit, puts on the steel-heeled boots, and starts assembling the tools.

xxx

So far it has all gone very smoothly, and if she is honest with herself, it almost worries her. Earle and family are away skiing for the holidays – she double-checked through the grapevine just in case – and the townhouse layout and the make and model of the vault are exactly as she was told. And just two hours after she made her way into the townhouse, she has cracked the last of the codes and is peering inside the vault.

There are boxes and file cabinets arranged on either side along the walls of what looks like a stainless steel storage pantry; she was not given precise indications about the vault's internal layout, just instructions to bring back the original signed Daggett Industries contract that, they said, should be in a file cabinet in here. She has time; she can stay here all night if she really has to, though it would be better if she could get out under cover of darkness. In any case, the only thing left is to get inside and start looking.

Selina steps into the vault –

and the moment she is inside, a one-inch steel grill slams in place behind her.

She suppresses the shudder of cold panic; this must be an extra security measure, activated by a pressure plate inside the vault. But then there must have been a way to deactivate it from the outside that she overlooked, or else how do the owners get in without getting caged? Maybe it is disabled from a smartphone or computer, in advance… anyway, she must find a way of getting past it. She scans the steel walls around the vault opening; all smooth, no sign of a scanner or keypad. In the worst case, she will have to file through the steel rods, but that means hours, what with the way they are spaced two inches apart. She will need to get out at least ten of these to squeeze through, that's twenty times, and each of them might take upwards of an hour…

And then, without warning, the steel floor she is standing on starts sliding up with a soft hum.

How much further will it go? All the way to crush her dead? She will never have time to file through anything now; with the way she is being lifted up there is no way she can even get purchase on the rods with a file. She looks frantically around, trying to see if she can tuck herself into the shelves on either side, slowly sliding down past her as the floorplate rises. No way; there is too little space there; even if she does her best to squeeze herself into the space, her shoulders are too broad for the width of the shelves, and her legs too long, and she will get crushed by the floorplate as it rides up.

An agonising minute later, all she can do is lie flat on the floorplate, staring up at the steel ceiling inching toward her face, and wondering how long it will take for this hellish contraption to kill her.

When it gets so close that she has to turn her face sideways to avoid her nose getting crushed, the plate stops.

Another minute passes.

She might survive this.

But she is still stuck, pinned between two steel plates, with the grill blocking her way out.

Carefully, she squeezes one hand on top of her belt and feels around for the file. She cannot even twist around, and it will be torture, not to mention really inefficient, to file through the bars with her hands above her head, but she is out of options. She reaches with both hands toward the bars –

And gives a violent start as her hands are grabbed from the other side of the bars, twisted sideways and pulled through, and her wrists are roughly handcuffed.

She hears footsteps and voices in the room outside the vault. "Good job, Miller. I'll tell Mr Daggett, he'll be very pleased with you."

Stryver, the little dipshit. So Daggett did not give her a second chance, after all.

Abruptly, the grill rises up, and she is dragged roughly out of her confinement, landing, awkwardly and painfully, on the floor, by now some five feet below. Before she knows it, Stryver's enforcers take hold of her arms, undo the handcuffs, manhandle her into a kneeling position, and reattach the handcuffs behind her back; and then Stryver himself struts into her field of vision.

"What, you thought you could play games with us, Miss Kyle?"

"I wasn't playing games," she mutters through her teeth. "What happened with Wayne's prints was force majeure."

"And spending two months by Wayne's side without giving us a single piece of useful information was force majeure as well? Or was it your greed and your selfishness?"

Selfishness, maybe; but not greed.

"Well?"

"I couldn't do it."

"Couldn't, or didn't want to?"

_Both, you dickhead._

"Doesn't matter. You _can_, of course, play games with us," Stryver sneers. "So long as you play by our rules. If you don't… well, then you only have yourself to blame if you end up being the prize instead of the player. Doctor Crane?" he calls out to someone behind her back, and presently she sees him. Young, tall, good-looking in a heartless-bastard kind of way, his sensuous mouth in jarring contrast with his ice-cold eyes. "You can take your Christmas present away, Dr Crane. You see," Stryver continues in a nauseatingly pleasant voice, "Dr Crane here is badly in need of a human subject to test his wonderful new invention on. Now that this Batman bandit and his friends Gordon and Dent have destroyed Gotham's drug trade, we've been racking our brains about the best ways to take advantage of the situation. And Dr Crane presented himself just in time, with a very effective proposition that is cheap to produce and has powerful effects. The only trouble is…" Stryver grins, and she struggles to breathe, "the first few users who tried it are now six feet under. As with many new inventions, it takes time to fine-tune, and it is not precisely clear as of now what the lethal dose is, and what the optimum concentration is instead. So when Mr Earle kindly allowed us to use his vault to set a little trap for you, Mr Daggett's first thought was to see how easy it would be to crush your spirit." Stryver snickers at his own disgusting pun. "And then we thought maybe you'd be more use alive… well, for a little while longer, at least. And the added advantage is, seeing how Mr Wayne is in love with you, it would make a nice Christmas present for him too, getting the news of your death sometime in the next couple of days."

"We broke up," she growls. Thank heaven for small mercies… he probably is with his next girlfriend already, and it is for the best.

"Too bad. Then no one's gonna miss you. Even in this outfit."

_Bruce would_, she thinks, _in any outfit. Not anymore_. He will never know she really cared for him, but that is for the best, too.

"She's all yours, Dr Crane," Stryver finishes, and the enforcers drag her up to lead her away, Crane marching by her side.

_So this is it_, she thinks coldly. _Merry Christmas, Selina, and may you rest in peace._

.

_December 25, 1 AM_

_Please, please let it kill me quickly._

She is lying tied to a gurney, wrists, ankles and neck, by thick sharp-edged plastic straps, in a filthy, dimly-lit basement, her eyes closed, listening to Crane elaborating on the fine points of medically-induced psychosis and the wonderful degree of dependency he hopes his creation will have – or rather, trying not to listen, and hoping that she dies before repeated applications of the drug in increased dosages drive her insane.

"Well, it's been fascinating talking to you," Crane coos as he walks up to her, syringe in hand, and she stiffens. "You are excellent company, though not very talkative yourself. Maybe that will change when you're under the inf-"

He does not have time to finish the word; there is an almighty boom as sparks fly from the bolted doors followed by billowing smoke, before the doors buckle inwards, one of them hanging precariously on its lower hinge… and the familiar black ghost leaps, almost flies, into the basement.

She never thought she would be so happy to see this particular man.

Crane looks around in search of an escape route – no use, and he himself knows it as he sighs and mutters_ not again_ before the masked figure knocks him out and trusses him up, handcuffs on his wrists and a thin rope around his ankles, in a matter of seconds, before jumping to Selina's side and cutting open her restraints. She sits up abruptly and instantly feels dizzy; he puts a gloved hand on her shoulder to steady her.

"Miss Kyle, are you all right?" The same low growl she remembers, actually sounding concerned. He is sitting half turned to her in the dim light, for some reason unwilling to face her.

"Yeah. You got here just in time." She feels drunk on adrenaline, but does her best to appear calm.

"Let's get out of here." He helps her up from the gurney and they sprint out of the basement and out the fire exit into the courtyard. The cold has subsided slightly, and it is easy to see why: there are snowflakes slowly floating down from the purple-grey clouds lit by Gotham's ruddy glow. She hears police sirens approaching, and before she can decide on her next step he tells her to hold on to him, extends his right arm upwards, and fires what looks to be a grapple gun; an instant later they are flying up through the air, and a few more seconds later they are standing on the roof and she watches the cops running into the building half a dozen floors below, guns at the ready.

Up here, it is strangely peaceful, the street-level noise floating up as a distant murmur, muffled by the snowfall. They stand in the sparkling flurry, two black shadows in the middle of a white Christmas, an incongruously romantic sight.

Maybe the two of them can really hook up. And maybe she can forget Bruce.

And maybe pigs fly.

"Miss Kyle…"

She turns to face him; he stands in profile to her again.

"I have something for you from a mutual friend." She hopes he does not see her lips tremble at the mention.

He reaches into his utility belt and takes out a silver thumb drive. "This is the software he told you about." She takes the stick from him, barely able to believe her luck. So it _is_ real, after all… "I hope you'll use it. The path of crime is too dangerous to throw your life away on."

Right now, she damn well agrees.

"Thank you." She should really thank Bruce for this. _If_ he wants to talk to her, that is, which is unlikely. "It's the first Christmas gift I've ever had."

She steps in front of him and kisses him, half on impulse, half from rational gratitude, and he responds, less forcefully than the other time; the chemistry is still there, but he pulls back a couple of seconds later when a helicopter floodlight falls on them. She tilts her head up to locate it, squinting at the descending snowflakes looking like a shower of stars, before her eyes turn back to the masked man before her…

…and to the thin line of the scar on his chin, clearly visible under the bright beam, that she saw up close countless times.

And before she says anything he sees from her wide eyes that she has seen it, and she _knows_.

He is really fast. She has barely said his name out loud and he is gone already, an indistinct winged outline fading in the snow-filled air as she watches from the edge of the roof.

_Wayne, you bastard._

The revelation is as incredible as it is logical, making all those pesky puzzle pieces fall into place. The bruises, the occasional unexpected absences, his strength and his proficiency with flying craft…

…and the unstoppable attraction she has felt for what, it turns out, are two incarnations of the same man.

She takes a running start and jumps to the fire escape of the building next door, unwilling to deal with the cops on the ground floor. Two minutes later she is standing on the street corner flagging down passing cabs; in five more minutes she is in luck, though the cabbie probably thinks the luck is all his, what with the way he is ogling her body-hugging outfit. She says the address and leans back against the seat cushion.

Time to go home.

xxx

"Selina?" Even on the small intercom screen, it is obvious that Bruce is happy with his visitor, though from the looks of it, he must be pretending he never left the penthouse. "Always good to see you. Come on in."

A minute later she is walking into the familiar space, acutely aware that she is still a touch unsteady on her high heels, the adrenaline seeping away too slowly for her liking. She was just here six hours ago, though it seems more like six years.

He is waiting for her ten feet from the door, wearing a black silk robe and pyjama pants. "Nice outfit," he says with an appreciative smile, taking in her catsuit.

"I see you've changed yours," she remarks, trying not to grin.

She has to admit, he pulls off a near-perfect pretence of being clueless, raised eyebrows and all.

"It's no use, I know who you are." She walks up to him and touches the scar on his chin. "You're not that hard to recognise."

He sighs and looks down in a show of surrender. "Sorry I didn't tell you. I had to tell four others besides you, earlier, but I want to be sure no one else finds out."

"Why?" Not that she disagrees, in principle.

"When they don't know who I am, it's easier to protect people I care about."

"I can usually protect myself," she tries to argue, unwilling to be classed as a damsel in distress. "Except just now, of course," she is forced to add, and feels her cheeks blushing.

"And I didn't want you to think I was after your gratitude."

She shakes her head at him in mock disapproval, then saunters – though in reality it is probably more like _staggers_ – toward the bar and pours herself a shot of whisky to calm the residual jitters. He follows her to the bar, but refuses the drink with a shake of his head.

"Well, you have my gratitude whether you want it or not," she says with a wry smile. "And thank you for the gift."

"You already thanked me," he says softly, stepping close to her.

"But not as yourself," she counters.

"Though I sure wouldn't mind if you thanked me again," he replies, half-grinning.

"Fishing for a kiss, are we?" The grin is there full force.

Well, she is happy to oblige.

"How did you get the CleanSlate anyway?" she asks a minute later, when they have to pause to catch their breath.

"I've been talking to the seller for the past month or so. He was supposed to have got back to me earlier, but when he did not, I called him a few hours ago and said I'd double the price. Figured I'd get it to you one way or another. Worked like a charm. I do hope you use it," he adds, serious this time.

"I will. I promise. We can do it now, or in the morning." She strikes a pose. "Meet Sabina Kite, martial arts instructor from hell."

He grins at her invention, but then pulls a mock-pensive face. "On second thought, I think I like the jewellery design idea better."

"I can do that in my spare time," she argues. Though forensics is probably a more exciting option.

"I have alternative ideas for how you could use your spare time... Sabina," he mutters in her ear.

"You can call me Selina in private. And I'm sorry for not having a gift for you," she adds, more seriously. "To tell you the truth, I wasn't really sure I'd make it to this point."

His immediate response is to pull her into his arms. "You being here," he says, his breath soft against her forehead, "is the best gift I can wish for."

"I guess you'll be stuck with me for a while longer," she half-whispers, looking up at him.

"I'd like to be stuck with you for much… much… _much_ longer," he mutters in between kissing her neck.

"And I guess we're in the wrong part of the penthouse."

"You took the words out of my mouth." He lifts her up in his arms. "But _that_ is easy to put right."

_._

_fin_

_._

_I leave it to readers to visualise the rest of their reunion in the hottest way imaginable, while I get out my long TDK/R reading list and dust off my reviewing skills : )_

_._

_As a final note, here is the plot timeline. __The story itself, from June 10 to December 25, covers 198 days, but I start the countdown from the day Bruce throws the fundraiser party for Harvey, which I take to be three days before Commissioner Loeb's funeral, thus June 7 (I saw later that the "canon" date was May 29__th__). My timeline is pretty arbitrary beyond the first five days._

.

_timeline_

t+0 June 7: Bruce hosts fundraiser party for Harvey, "real" start of this plot

t+3 June 10 Commissioner Loeb's funeral, "official" start of this plot

t+4 June 11: Harvey Dent holds press conference, he and Rachel are kidnapped and almost killed

t+5 June 12 (early morning) Bruce takes Harvey to the airport post-explosion

t+5 June 12 (early afternoon) Rachel confronts Bruce over Harvey's whereabouts

t+13 June 20 (evening) Bruce goes to Mayreau, Rachel talks to Alfred; Harvey re-reads Rachel's letter

t+19 June 26 Harvey sees his face post-skin graft, Bruce gets drunk

t+20 June 27 Bruce goes back to Gotham to bring Rachel to Mayreau

t+31 July 8 Harvey goes to see Bruce in Gotham

t+142 October 28 Bruce discovers Selina's theft (_end of part 1_)

t+143 October 29 Bruce (as Batman) catches Selina fencing his prints

t+145 October 31 Bruce (as himself) "meets" Selina at the ball

t+200 December 24 the break-up

t+201 December 25 the reunion

.


End file.
